Anatomy of Melancholy, by Robert Burton

Memb. iii.

Subsect. i.

Passions and Perturbations of the Mind, how they cause Melancholy.

As that gymnosophist in 1571Plutarch made
answer to Alexander (demanding which spake best), Every one of his fellows did speak better than the other: so may I
say of these causes; to him that shall require which is the greatest, every one is more grievous than other, and this
of passion the greatest of all. A most frequent and ordinary cause of melancholy, 1572fulmen perturbationum (Picolomineus
calls it) this thunder and lightning of perturbation, which causeth such violent and speedy alterations in this our
microcosm, and many times subverts the good estate and temperature of it. For as the body works upon the mind by his
bad humours, troubling the spirits, sending gross fumes into the brain, and so per consequens
disturbing the soul, and all the faculties of it,

with fear, sorrow, &c., which are ordinary symptoms of this disease: so on the other side, the mind most
effectually works upon the body, producing by his passions and perturbations miraculous alterations, as melancholy,
despair, cruel diseases, and sometimes death itself. Insomuch that it is most true which Plato saith in his Charmides,
omnia corporis mala ab anima procedere; all the 1574mischiefs of the body proceed from the soul: and Democritus in 1575Plutarch urgeth, Damnatam iri animam a
corpore, if the body should in this behalf bring an action against the soul, surely the soul would be cast and
convicted, that by her supine negligence had caused such inconveniences, having authority over the body, and using it
for an instrument, as a smith doth his hammer (saith 1576Cyprian),
imputing all those vices and maladies to the mind. Even so doth 1577Philostratus, non coinquinatur corpus, nisi consensuanimae; the
body is not corrupted, but by the soul. Lodovicus Vives will have such turbulent commotions proceed from ignorance and
indiscretion. 1578All philosophers impute the miseries of the body to the soul, that should have governed it
better, by command of reason, and hath not done it. The Stoics are altogether of opinion (as 1579Lipsius and 1580Picolomineus record), that a wise man should be ἀπαθής, without
all manner of passions and perturbations whatsoever, as 1581Seneca reports of Cato, the 1582 Greeks of Socrates, and 1583Io. Aubanus of a
nation in Africa, so free from passion, or rather so stupid, that if they be wounded with a sword, they will only look
back. 1584Lactantius,
2 instit., will exclude “fear from a wise man:” others except all, some the greatest
passions. But let them dispute how they will, set down in Thesi, give precepts to the contrary; we find that of
1585Lemnius true by common experience; “No mortal man is free from these perturbations: or if
he be so, sure he is either a god, or a block.” They are born and bred with us, we have them from our parents by
inheritance. A parentibus habemus malum hunc assem, saith 1586Pelezius, Nascitur una nobiscum, aliturque, 'tis propagated from Adam, Cain was melancholy, 1587as Austin hath it, and who is not? Good discipline, education,
philosophy, divinity (I cannot deny), may mitigate and restrain these passions in some few men at some times, but most
part they domineer, and are so violent, 1588that
as a torrent (torrens velut aggere rupto) bears down all before, and overflows his banks,
sternit agros, sternit sata, (lays waste the fields, prostrates the crops,) they overwhelm
reason, judgment, and pervert the temperature of the body; Fertur 1589 equis auriga, nec audit currus habenas. Now such a man (saith
1590Austin) “that is so led, in a wise man's eye, is no better than he that stands upon his
head.” It is doubted by some, Gravioresne morbi a perturbationibus, an ab humoribus, whether
humours or perturbations cause the more grievous maladies. But we find that of our Saviour, Mat.
xxvi. 41, most true, “The spirit is willing, the flesh is weak,” we cannot resist; and this of 1591Philo Judeus, “Perturbations often offend the body, and are most frequent causes of
melancholy, turning it out of the hinges of his health.” Vives compares them to 1592“Winds upon the sea, some only move as those great gales, but others turbulent quite
overturn the ship.” Those which are light, easy, and more seldom, to our thinking, do us little harm, and are therefore
contemned of us: yet if they be reiterated, 1593“as the rain” (saith Austin)
“doth a stone, so do these perturbations penetrate the mind:” 1594and (as one observes) “produce a habit
of melancholy at the last,” which having gotten the mastery in our souls, may well be called diseases.

How these passions produce this effect, 1595Agrippa hath handled at large, Occult. Philos. l. 11. c. 63. Cardan,
l. 14. subtil. Lemnius, l. 1. c. 12, de occult. nat. mir. et lib. 1. cap.
16. Suarez, Met. disput. 18. sect. 1. art. 25. T. Bright, cap.
12. of his Melancholy Treatise. Wright the Jesuit, in his Book of the Passions of the Mind, &c. Thus in
brief, to our imagination cometh by the outward sense or memory, some object to be known (residing in the foremost part
of the brain), which he misconceiving or amplifying presently communicates to the heart, the seat of all affections.
The pure spirits forthwith flock from the brain to the heart, by certain secret channels, and signify what good or bad
object was presented; 1596which immediately bends itself to prosecute, or avoid it; and withal, draweth with it
other humours to help it: so in pleasure, concur great store of purer spirits; in sadness, much melancholy blood; in
ire, choler. If the imagination be very apprehensive, intent, and violent, it sends great store of spirits to, or from
the heart, and makes a deeper impression, and greater tumult, as the humours in the body be likewise prepared, and the
temperature itself ill or well disposed, the passions are longer and stronger; so that the first step and fountain of
all our grievances in this kind, is 1597laesa imaginatio, which misinforming the heart, causeth all these
distemperatures, alteration and confusion of spirits and humours. By means of which, so disturbed, concoction is
hindered, and the principal parts are much debilitated; as 1598Dr. Navarra well declared, being consulted by Montanus about a melancholy Jew. The
spirits so confounded, the nourishment must needs be abated, bad humours increased, crudities and thick spirits
engendered with melancholy blood. The other parts cannot perform their functions, having the spirits drawn from them by
vehement passion, but fail in sense and motion; so we look upon a thing, and see it not; hear, and observe not; which
otherwise would much affect us, had we been free. I may therefore conclude with 1599Arnoldus, Maxima vis est phantasiae, et
huic uni fere, non autem corporis intemperiei, omnis melancholiae causa est ascribenda: “Great is the force of
imagination, and much more ought the cause of melancholy to be ascribed to this alone, than to the distemperature of
the body.” Of which imagination, because it hath so great a stroke in producing this malady, and is so powerful of
itself, it will not be improper to my discourse, to make a brief digression, and speak of the force of it, and how it
causeth this alteration. Which manner of digression, howsoever some dislike, as frivolous and impertinent, yet I am of
1600Beroaldus's opinion, “Such digressions do mightily delight and refresh a weary reader,
they are like sauce to a bad stomach, and I do therefore most willingly use them.”

Subsect. ii.

Of the Force of Imagination.

What imagination is, I have sufficiently declared in my digression of the anatomy of the soul. I will only now point
at the wonderful effects and power of it; which, as it is eminent in all, so most especially it rageth in melancholy
persons, in keeping the species of objects so long, mistaking, amplifying them by continual and 1601strong meditation, until at length it produceth in some parties real effects, causeth
this, and many other maladies. And although this phantasy of ours be a subordinate faculty to reason, and should be
ruled by it, yet in many men, through inward or outward distemperatures, defect of organs, which are unapt, or
otherwise contaminated, it is likewise unapt, or hindered, and hurt. This we see verified in sleepers, which by reason
of humours and concourse of vapours troubling the phantasy, imagine many times absurd and prodigious things, and in
such as are troubled with incubus, or witch-ridden (as we call it), if they lie on their backs, they suppose an old
woman rides, and sits so hard upon them, that they are almost stifled for want of breath; when there is nothing
offends, but a concourse of bad humours, which trouble the phantasy. This is likewise evident in such as walk in the
night in their sleep, and do strange feats: 1602these vapours move the phantasy, the phantasy the appetite, which moving the animal spirits
causeth the body to walk up and down as if they were awake. Fracast. l. 3. de intellect,
refers all ecstasies to this force of imagination, such as lie whole days together in a trance: as that priest whom
1603Celsus speaks of, that could separate himself from his senses when he list, and lie like
a dead man, void of life and sense. Cardan brags of himself, that he could do as much, and that when he list. Many
times such men when they come to themselves, tell strange things of heaven and hell, what visions they have seen; as
that St. Owen, in Matthew Paris, that went into St. Patrick's purgatory, and the monk of Evesham in the same author.
Those common apparitions in Bede and Gregory, Saint Bridget's revelations, Wier. l. 3. de lamiis, c.
11. Caesar Vanninus, in his Dialogues, &c. reduceth (as I have formerly said), with all those tales of
witches' progresses, dancing, riding, transformations, operations, &c. to the force of 1604 imagination, and the 1605devil's illusions. The like effects almost are to be seen in such as are awake: how many
chimeras, antics, golden mountains and castles in the air do they build unto themselves? I appeal to painters,
mechanicians, mathematicians. Some ascribe all vices to a false and corrupt imagination, anger, revenge, lust,
ambition, covetousness, which prefers falsehood before that which is right and good, deluding the soul with false shows
and suppositions. 1606Bernardus Penottus will
have heresy and superstition to proceed from this fountain; as he falsely imagineth, so he believeth; and as he
conceiveth of it, so it must be, and it shall be, contra gentes, he will have it so. But most
especially in passions and affections, it shows strange and evident effects: what will not a fearful man conceive in
the dark? What strange forms of bugbears, devils, witches, goblins? Lavater imputes the greatest cause of spectrums,
and the like apparitions, to fear, which above all other passions begets the strongest imagination (saith 1607Wierus), and so likewise love, sorrow, joy, &c. Some die suddenly, as she that saw her son
come from the battle at Cannae, &c. Jacob the patriarch, by force of imagination, made speckled lambs, laying
speckled rods before his sheep. Persina, that Ethiopian queen in Heliodorus, by seeing the picture of Persius and
Andromeda, instead of a blackamoor, was brought to bed of a fair white child. In imitation of whom belike, a
hard-favoured fellow in Greece, because he and his wife were both deformed, to get a good brood of children,
Elegantissimas imagines in thalamo collocavit, &c. hung the fairest pictures he could buy
for money in his chamber, “That his wife by frequent sight of them, might conceive and bear such children.” And if we
may believe Bale, one of Pope Nicholas the Third's concubines by seeing of 1608a bear was brought to bed of a monster. “If a woman”
(saith 1609 Lemnius), “at the time of her conception think of another man present or absent, the
child will be like him.” Great-bellied women, when they long, yield us prodigious examples in this kind, as moles,
warts, scars, harelips, monsters, especially caused in their children by force of a depraved phantasy in them:
Ipsam speciem quam animo effigiat, faetui inducit: She imprints that stamp upon her child which
she 1610conceives unto herself. And therefore Lodovicus Vives, lib. 2. de
Christ, faem., gives a special caution to great-bellied women, 1611“that they do not admit such absurd conceits and cogitations, but by all means avoid
those horrible objects, heard or seen, or filthy spectacles.” Some will laugh, weep, sigh, groan, blush, tremble,
sweat, at such things as are suggested unto them by their imagination. Avicenna speaks of one that could cast himself
into a palsy when he list; and some can imitate the tunes of birds and beasts that they can hardly be discerned:
Dagebertus' and Saint Francis' scars and wounds, like those of Christ's (if at the least any such were), 1612Agrippa supposeth to have
happened by force of imagination: that some are turned to wolves, from men to women, and women again to men (which is
constantly believed) to the same imagination; or from men to asses, dogs, or any other shapes. 1613Wierus ascribes all those famous transformations to
imagination; that in hydrophobia they seem to see the picture of a dog, still in their water, 1614that melancholy men and sick men conceive so many
fantastical visions, apparitions to themselves, and have such absurd apparitions, as that they are kings, lords, cocks,
bears, apes, owls; that they are heavy, light, transparent, great and little, senseless and dead (as shall be showed
more at large, in our 1615
sections of symptoms), can be imputed to nought else, but to a corrupt, false, and violent imagination. It works not in
sick and melancholy men only, but even most forcibly sometimes in such as are sound: it makes them suddenly sick, and
1616alters their temperature in an instant. And sometimes a strong conceit or apprehension, as
1617Valesius proves, will take away diseases: in both kinds it will produce real effects. Men, if
they see but another man tremble, giddy or sick of some fearful disease, their apprehension and fear is so strong in
this kind, that they will have the same disease. Or if by some soothsayer, wiseman, fortune-teller, or physician, they
be told they shall have such a disease, they will so seriously apprehend it, that they will instantly labour of it. A
thing familiar in China (saith Riccius the Jesuit), 1618“If it be told them they shall be sick on such a day, when that day comes they will
surely be sick, and will be so terribly afflicted, that sometimes they die upon it.” Dr. Cotta in his discovery of
ignorant practitioners of physic, cap. 8, hath two strange stories to this purpose, what
fancy is able to do. The one of a parson's wife in Northamptonshire, An. 1607, that coming to a physician, and
told by him that she was troubled with the sciatica, as he conjectured (a disease she was free from), the same night
after her return, upon his words, fell into a grievous fit of a sciatica: and such another example he hath of another
good wife, that was so troubled with the cramp, after the same manner she came by it, because her physician did but
name it. Sometimes death itself is caused by force of phantasy. I have heard of one that coming by chance in company of
him that was thought to be sick of the plague (which was not so) fell down suddenly dead. Another was sick of the
plague with conceit. One seeing his fellow let blood falls down in a swoon. Another (saith 1619Cardan out of Aristotle), fell down dead (which is familiar to women
at any ghastly sight), seeing but a man hanged. A Jew in France (saith 1620Lodovicus Vives), came by chance over a dangerous
passage or plank, that lay over a brook in the dark, without harm, the next day perceiving what danger he was in, fell
down dead. Many will not believe such stories to be true, but laugh commonly, and deride when they hear of them; but
let these men consider with themselves, as 1621Peter Byarus illustrates it, If they were set to walk upon a plank on high, they would be
giddy, upon which they dare securely walk upon the ground. Many (saith Agrippa), 1622“strong-hearted men otherwise, tremble at such sights, dazzle, and are sick, if they look
but down from a high place, and what moves them but conceit?” As some are so molested by phantasy; so some again, by
fancy alone, and a good conceit, are as easily recovered. We see commonly the toothache, gout, falling-sickness, biting
of a mad dog, and many such maladies cured by spells, words, characters, and charms, and many green wounds by that now
so much used Unguentum Armarium, magnetically cured, which Crollius and Goclenius in a book of
late hath defended, Libavius in a just tract as stiffly contradicts, and most men controvert. All the world knows there
is no virtue in such charms or cures, but a strong conceit and opinion alone, as 1623Pomponatius holds, “which forceth a motion of the humours, spirits, and blood, which
takes away the cause of the malady from the parts affected.” The like we may say of our magical effects, superstitious
cures, and such as are done by mountebanks and wizards. “As by wicked incredulity many men are hurt” (so saith 1624Wierus of charms, spells, &c.), “we find in our experience, by the same means many
are relieved.” An empiric oftentimes, and a silly chirurgeon, doth more strange cures than a rational physician.
Nymannus gives a reason, because the patient puts his confidence in him, 1625 which Avicenna “prefers before art, precepts, and all remedies whatsoever.” 'Tis opinion alone
(saith 1626Cardan), that makes or mars physicians, and he doth the best cures, according to Hippocrates,
in whom most trust. So diversely doth this phantasy of ours affect, turn, and wind, so imperiously command our bodies,
which as another 1627“Proteus, or a chameleon, can take all shapes; and is of such force (as Ficinus adds),
that it can work upon others, as well as ourselves.” How can otherwise blear eyes in one man cause the like affection
in another? Why doth one man's yawning 1628make another yawn? One man's pissing provoke a second many times to do the like? Why doth
scraping of trenchers offend a third, or hacking of files? Why doth a carcass bleed when the murderer is brought before
it, some weeks after the murder hath been done? Why do witches and old women fascinate and bewitch children: but as
Wierus, Paracelsus, Cardan, Mizaldus, Valleriola, Caesar Vanninus, Campanella, and many philosophers think, the
forcible imagination of the one party moves and alters the spirits of the other. Nay more, they can cause and cure not
only diseases, maladies, and several infirmities, by this means, as Avicenna, de anim. l. 4. sect.
4, supposeth in parties remote, but move bodies from their places, cause thunder, lightning, tempests, which
opinion Alkindus, Paracelsus, and some others, approve of. So that I may certainly conclude this strong conceit or
imagination is astrum hominis, and the rudder of this our ship, which reason should steer, but,
overborne by phantasy, cannot manage, and so suffers itself, and this whole vessel of ours to be overruled, and often
overturned. Read more of this in Wierus, l. 3. de Lamiis, c. 8, 9, 10. Franciscus Valesius,
med. controv. l. 5. cont. 6. Marcellus Donatus, l. 2. c. 1. de hist. med.
mirabil. Levinus Lemnius, de occult. nat. mir. l. 1. c. 12. Cardan, l. 18. de rerum var. Corn. Agrippa, de occult. plilos. cap. 64, 65. Camerarius,
1 cent. cap. 54. horarum subcis. Nymannus, morat. de Imag.
Laurentius, and him that is instar omnium, Fienus, a famous physician of Antwerp, that wrote
three books de viribus imaginationis. I have thus far digressed, because this imagination is
the medium deferens of passions, by whose means they work and produce many times prodigious effects: and as the
phantasy is more or less intended or remitted, and their humours disposed, so do perturbations move, more or less, and
take deeper impression.

Subsect. iii.

Division of Perturbations.

Perturbations and passions, which trouble the phantasy, though they dwell between the confines of sense and reason,
yet they rather follow sense than reason, because they are drowned in corporeal organs of sense. They are commonly
1629reduced into two inclinations, irascible
and concupiscible. The Thomists subdivide them into eleven, six in the coveting, and five in the invading. Aristotle
reduceth all to pleasure and pain, Plato to love and hatred, 1630Vives to good and bad. If good, it is present, and then we absolutely joy and love; or to come,
and then we desire and hope for it. If evil, we absolute hate it; if present, it is by sorrow; if to come fear. These
four passions 1631Bernard compares “to the wheels of a chariot, by which we are carried in this world.” All other
passions are subordinate unto these four, or six, as some will: love, joy, desire, hatred, sorrow, fear; the rest, as
anger, envy, emulation, pride, jealousy, anxiety, mercy, shame, discontent, despair, ambition, avarice, &c., are
reducible unto the first; and if they be immoderate, they 1632consume the spirits, and melancholy is especially caused by them. Some few discreet men there
are, that can govern themselves, and curb in these inordinate affections, by religion, philosophy, and such divine
precepts, of meekness, patience, and the like; but most part for want of government, out of indiscretion, ignorance,
they suffer themselves wholly to be led by sense, and are so far from repressing rebellious inclinations, that they
give all encouragement unto them, leaving the reins, and using all provocations to further them: bad by nature, worse
by art, discipline, 1633custom, education, and a perverse will of their own, they follow on, wheresoever their
unbridled affections will transport them, and do more out of custom, self-will, than out of reason. Contumax voluntas, as Melancthon calls it, malum facit: this stubborn will of ours
perverts judgment, which sees and knows what should and ought to be done, and yet will not do it. Mancipia gulae, slaves to their several lusts and appetite, they precipitate and plunge 1634themselves into a labyrinth of cares, blinded
with lust, blinded with ambition; 1635“They seek that at God's hands which they may give unto themselves, if they could but
refrain from those cares and perturbations, wherewith they continually macerate their minds.” But giving way to these
violent passions of fear, grief, shame, revenge, hatred, malice, &c., they are torn in pieces, as Actaeon was with
his dogs, and 1636crucify their own souls.

Subsect. iv.

Sorrow a Cause of Melancholy.

Sorrow. Insanus dolor. In this catalogue of passions, which so much torment the soul of man,
and cause this malady, (for I will briefly speak of them all, and in their order,) the first place in this irascible
appetite, may justly be challenged by sorrow. An inseparable companion, 1637“The mother and daughter of melancholy, her epitome, symptom, and chief cause:” as
Hippocrates hath it, they beget one another, and tread in a ring, for sorrow is both cause and symptom of this disease.
How it is a symptom shall be shown in its place. That it is a cause all the world acknowledgeth, Dolor
nonnullis insaniae causa fuit, et aliorum morborum insanabilium, saith Plutarch to Apollonius; a cause of
madness, a cause of many other diseases, a sole cause of this mischief, 1638Lemnius calls
it. So doth Rhasis, cont. l. 1. tract. 9. Guianerius, Tract. 15. c.
5, And if it take root once, it ends in despair, as 1639Felix Plater observes, and as in 1640Cebes' table, may well be
coupled with it. 1641Chrysostom, in his seventeenth epistle to Olympia, describes it to be “a cruel torture of
the soul, a most inexplicable grief, poisoned worm, consuming body and soul, and gnawing the very heart, a perpetual
executioner, continual night, profound darkness, a whirlwind, a tempest, an ague not appearing, heating worse than any
fire, and a battle that hath no end. It crucifies worse than any tyrant; no torture, no strappado, no bodily punishment
is like unto it.” 'Tis the eagle without question which the poets feigned to gnaw 1642Prometheus' heart, and “no heaviness is like unto
the heaviness of the heart,” Eccles. xxv. 15, 16. 1643“Every
perturbation is a misery, but grief a cruel torment,” a domineering passion: as in old Rome, when the Dictator was
created, all inferior magistracies ceased; when grief appears, all other passions vanish. “It dries up the bones,”
saith Solomon, cap. 17. Prov., makes them hollow-eyed, pale, and lean, furrow-faced, to
have dead looks, wrinkled brows, shrivelled cheeks, dry bodies, and quite perverts their temperature that are
misaffected with it. As Eleonara, that exiled mournful duchess (in our 1644English Ovid), laments to her noble husband Humphrey,
Duke of Gloucester,

“It hinders concoction, refrigerates the heart, takes away stomach, colour, and sleep, thickens the blood,”
(1646Fernelius, l. 1. c. 18. de morb. causis,) “contaminates the
spirits.” (1647Piso.) Overthrows the natural heat, perverts the good estate of body and mind, and makes them
weary of their lives, cry out, howl and roar for very anguish of their souls. David confessed as much, Psalm xxxviii. 8, “I have roared for the very disquietness of my heart.” And Psalm cxix. 4, part 4 v. “My soul melteth away for very heaviness,” v.
38. “I am like a bottle in the smoke.” Antiochus complained that he could not sleep, and that his heart fainted
for grief, 1648Christ himself, vir dolorum, out of an apprehension of grief, did sweat blood, Mark xiv. “His
soul was heavy to the death, and no sorrow was like unto his.” Crato, consil. 24. l. 2, gives
instance in one that was so melancholy by reason of 1649grief; and Montanus, consil. 30, in a noble matron, 1650“that had no other cause of this
mischief.” I. S. D. in Hildesheim, fully cured a patient of his that was much troubled with melancholy, and for many
years, 1651“but afterwards, by a little occasion of sorrow, he fell into his former fits, and was
tormented as before.” Examples are common, how it causeth melancholy, 1652desperation, and sometimes
death itself; for (Eccles. xxxviii. 15,) “Of heaviness comes death; worldly sorrow causeth
death.” 2 Cor. vii. 10, Psalm xxxi. 10, “My life is wasted
with heaviness, and my years with mourning.” Why was Hecuba said to be turned to a dog? Niobe into a stone? but that
for grief she was senseless and stupid. Severus the Emperor 1653 died for grief; and how
1654many myriads besides? Tanta illi est feritas, tanta est insania luctus.
1655Melancthon gives a reason of it, 1656“the gathering of much melancholy blood about the heart, which collection extinguisheth
the good spirits, or at least dulleth them, sorrow strikes the heart, makes it tremble and pine away, with great pain;
and the black blood drawn from the spleen, and diffused under the ribs, on the left side, makes those perilous
hypochondriacal convulsions, which happen to them that are troubled with sorrow.”

Subsect. v.

Fear, a Cause.

Cousin german to sorrow, is fear, or rather a sister, fidus Achates, and continual
companion, an assistant and a principal agent in procuring of this mischief; a cause and symptom as the other. In a
word, as 1657 Virgil of the Harpies, I may
justly say of them both,

Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec saevior ulla

Pestis et ira Deum stygiis sese extulit undis.

A sadder monster, or more cruel plague so fell,

Or vengeance of the gods, ne'er came from Styx or Hell.

This foul fiend of fear was worshipped heretofore as a god by the Lacedaemonians, and most of those other torturing
1658affections, and so was sorrow amongst the rest, under the name of Angerona Dea, they stood in
such awe of them, as Austin, de Civitat. Dei, lib. 4. cap. 8, noteth out of Varro, fear was
commonly 1659adored and painted in their temples with a lion's head; and as Macrobius records, l. 10. Saturnalium; 1660“In the calends of January, Angerona had her holy day, to whom in the temple of Volupia,
or goddess of pleasure, their augurs and bishops did yearly sacrifice; that, being propitious to them, she might expel
all cares, anguish, and vexation of the mind for that year following.” Many lamentable effects this fear causeth in
men, as to be red, pale, tremble, sweat, 1661it makes sudden cold and heat to come over all the body, palpitation of the heart,
syncope, &c. It amazeth many men that are to speak, or show themselves in public assemblies, or before some great
personages, as Tully confessed of himself, that he trembled still at the beginning of his speech; and Demosthenes, that
great orator of Greece, before Philippus. It confounds voice and memory, as Lucian wittily brings in Jupiter Tragoedus,
so much afraid of his auditory, when he was to make a speech to the rest of the Gods, that he could not utter a ready
word, but was compelled to use Mercury's help in prompting. Many men are so amazed and astonished with fear, they know
not where they are, what they say, 1662what they do, and that which is worst, it tortures them many days before with continual
affrights and suspicion. It hinders most honourable attempts, and makes their hearts ache, sad and heavy. They that
live in fear are never free, 1663resolute, secure, never merry, but in continual pain: that, as Vives truly said,
Nulla est miseria major quam metus, no greater misery, no rack, nor torture like unto it, ever
suspicious, anxious, solicitous, they are childishly drooping without reason, without judgment, 1664“especially if some terrible object be offered,” as Plutarch hath it. It causeth oftentimes
sudden madness, and almost all manner of diseases, as I have sufficiently illustrated in my 1665 digression of the force of imagination, and shall do
more at large in my section of 1666terrors. Fear makes our imagination conceive what it list, invites the devil to come to us, as
1667Agrippa and Cardan avouch, and tyranniseth over our phantasy more than all other affections,
especially in the dark. We see this verified in most men, as 1668Lavater
saith, Quae metuunt, fingunt; what they fear they conceive, and feign unto themselves; they
think they see goblins, hags, devils, and many times become melancholy thereby. Cardan, subtil. lib.
18, hath an example of such an one, so caused to be melancholy (by sight of a bugbear) all his life after.
Augustus Caesar durst not sit in the dark, nisi aliquo assidente, saith 1669Suetonius, Nunquam tenebris exigilavit.
And 'tis strange what women and children will conceive unto themselves, if they go over a churchyard in the night, lie,
or be alone in a dark room, how they sweat and tremble on a sudden. Many men are troubled with future events,
foreknowledge of their fortunes, destinies, as Severus the Emperor, Adrian and Domitian, Quod sciret
ultimum vitae diem, saith Suetonius, valde solicitus, much tortured in mind because he
foreknew his end; with many such, of which I shall speak more opportunely in another place.1670 Anxiety, mercy, pity, indignation, &c., and such
fearful branches derived from these two stems of fear and sorrow, I voluntarily omit; read more of them in 1671Carolus Pascalius, 1672Dandinus, &c.

Subsect. vi.

Shame and Disgrace, Causes.

Shame and disgrace cause most violent passions and bitter pangs. Ob pudorem et dedecus publicum, ob
errorum commissum saepe moventur generosi animi (Felix Plater, lib. 3. de alienat
mentis.) Generous minds are often moved with shame, to despair for some public disgrace. And he, saith Philo,
lib. 2. de provid. dei, 1673“that subjects himself to fear, grief, ambition, shame, is not happy, but altogether
miserable, tortured with continual labour, care, and misery.” It is as forcible a batterer as any of the rest: 1674“Many men neglect the tumults of the world, and care not for glory, and yet they are
afraid of infamy, repulse, disgrace,” (Tul. offic. l. 1,) “they can severely contemn
pleasure, bear grief indifferently, but they are quite 1675battered and broken, with reproach and obloquy:” (siquidem vita et fama pari
passu ambulant) and are so dejected many times for some public injury, disgrace, as a box on the ear by their
inferior, to be overcome of their adversary, foiled in the field, to be out in a speech, some foul fact committed or
disclosed, &c. that they dare not come abroad all their lives after, but melancholise in corners, and keep in
holes. The most generous spirits are most subject to it; Spiritus altos frangit et generosos:
Hieronymus. Aristotle, because he could not understand the motion of Euripus, for grief and shame drowned himself:
Caelius Rodigimus antiquar. lec. lib. 29. cap. 8.Homerus pudore
consumptus, was swallowed up with this passion of shame 1676 “because he could not unfold the
fisherman's riddle.” Sophocles killed himself, 1677“for that a tragedy of his
was hissed off the stage:” Valer. max. lib. 9. cap. 12. Lucretia stabbed herself, and so did
1678Cleopatra, “when she saw that she was reserved for a triumph, to avoid the infamy.” Antonius
the Roman, 1679“after he was overcome of his enemy, for three days' space sat solitary in the fore-part
of the ship, abstaining from all company, even of Cleopatra herself, and afterwards for very shame butchered himself,”
Plutarch, vita ejus. Apollonius Rhodius 1680“wilfully banished himself,
forsaking his country, and all his dear friends, because he was out in reciting his poems,” Plinius, lib. 7. cap. 23. Ajax ran mad, because his arms were adjudged to Ulysses. In China 'tis an ordinary thing
for such as are excluded in those famous trials of theirs, or should take degrees, for shame and grief to lose their
wits, 1681Mat Riccius expedit. ad Sinas, l. 3. c. 9. Hostratus the friar
took that book which Reuclin had writ against him, under the name of Epist. obscurorum
virorum, so to heart, that for shame and grief he made away with himself, 1682Jovius in elogiis. A grave and learned minister, and an ordinary
preacher at Alcmar in Holland, was (one day as he walked in the fields for his recreation) suddenly taken with a lax or
looseness, and thereupon compelled to retire to the next ditch; but being 1683surprised at unawares, by some gentlewomen of his parish wandering that way, was so
abashed, that he did never after show his head in public, or come into the pulpit, but pined away with melancholy:
(Pet. Forestus med. observat. lib. 10. observat. 12.) So shame amongst other passions can
play his prize.

I know there be many base, impudent, brazenfaced rogues, that will 1684Nulla pallescere culpa, be moved with nothing, take no infamy or
disgrace to heart, laugh at all; let them be proved perjured, stigmatised, convict rogues, thieves, traitors, lose
their ears, be whipped, branded, carted, pointed at, hissed, reviled, and derided with 1685Ballio the Bawd in Plautus, they rejoice at it, Cantores probos;
“babe and Bombax,” what care they? We have too many such in our times,

Yet a modest man, one that hath grace, a generous spirit, tender of his reputation, will be deeply wounded, and so
grievously affected with it, that he had rather give myriads of crowns, lose his life, than suffer the least defamation
of honour, or blot in his good name. And if so be that he cannot avoid it, as a nightingale, Que
cantando victa moritur, (saith 1687Mizaldus,) dies for shame if another bird sing better, he languisheth and pineth away in the
anguish of his spirit.

Subsect. vii.

Envy, Malice, Hatred, Causes.

Envy and malice are two links of this chain, and both, as Guianerius, Tract. 15. cap. 2,
proves out of Galen, 3 Aphorism, com. 22, 1688 “cause this malady by themselves, especially if their bodies be otherwise disposed to
melancholy.” 'Tis Valescus de Taranta, and Felix Platerus' observation, 1689“Envy so gnaws many men's hearts, that they become altogether melancholy.” And therefore belike
Solomon, Prov. xiv. 13, calls it, “the rotting of the bones,” Cyprian, vulnus occultum;

The Sicilian tyrants never invented the like torment. It crucifies their souls, withers their bodies, makes them
hollow-eyed, 1691pale, lean, and ghastly to behold, Cyprian, ser. 2. de zelo et
livore. 1692“As a moth gnaws a garment, so,” saith Chrysostom, “doth envy consume a man;” to be a
living anatomy: a “skeleton, to be a lean and 1693pale carcass, quickened with a 1694fiend”, Hall in Charact. for so often as an envious wretch sees
another man prosper, to be enriched, to thrive, and be fortunate in the world, to get honours, offices, or the like, he
repines and grieves.

He tortures himself if his equal, friend, neighbour, be preferred, commended, do well; if he understand of it, it
galls him afresh; and no greater pain can come to him than to hear of another man's well-doing; 'tis a dagger at his
heart every such object. He looks at him as they that fell down in Lucian's rock of honour, with an envious eye, and
will damage himself, to do another a mischief: Atque cadet subito, dum super hoste cadat. As he
did in Aesop, lose one eye willingly, that his fellow might lose both, or that rich man in 1696Quintilian that poisoned the flowers in his garden, because his neighbour's bees should get no
more honey from them. His whole life is sorrow, and every word he speaks a satire: nothing fats him but other men's
ruins. For to speak in a word, envy is nought else but Tristitia de bonis alienis, sorrow for
other men's good, be it present, past, or to come: et gaudium de adversis, and 1697joy at their harms, opposite to mercy, 1698which grieves at other men's mischances, and misaffects the body in another kind; so
Damascen defines it, lib. 2. de orthod. fid. Thomas, 2. 2. quaest. 36.
art. 1. Aristotle, l. 2. Rhet. c. 4. et 10. Plato Philebo.
Tully, 3. Tusc. Greg. Nic. l. de virt. animae, c. 12. Basil,
de Invidia. Pindarus Od. 1. ser. 5, and we find it true. 'Tis a
common disease, and almost natural to us, as 1699Tacitus holds, to envy another man's prosperity. And 'tis in most men an incurable disease.
1700“I have read,” saith Marcus Aurelius, “Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee authors; I have consulted
with many wise men for a remedy for envy, I could find none, but to renounce all happiness, and to be a wretch, and
miserable for ever.” 'Tis the beginning of hell in this life, and a passion not to be excused. 1701“Every other sin hath some pleasure annexed to it, or will admit of an excuse; envy alone
wants both. Other sins last but for awhile; the gut may be satisfied, anger remits, hatred hath an end, envy never
ceaseth.” Cardan, lib. 2. de sap. Divine and humane examples are very familiar; you may run
and read them, as that of Saul and David, Cain and Abel, angebat illum non proprium peccatum, sed
fratris prosperitas, saith Theodoret, it was his brother's good fortune galled him. Rachel envied her sister,
being barren, Gen. xxx. Joseph's brethren him, Gen. xxxvii.
David had a touch of this vice, as he confesseth, 1702Psal. 37. 1703Jeremy and 1704Habakkuk, they
repined at others' good, but in the end they corrected themselves, Psal. 75, “fret not
thyself,” &c. Domitian spited Agricola for his worth, 1705“that a private man should be so
much glorified.” 1706Cecinna
was envied of his fellow-citizens, because he was more richly adorned. But of all others, 1707women are most weak, ob pulchritudinem invidae sunt foeminae (Musaeus) aut
amat, aut odit, nihil est tertium (Granatensis.) They love or hate, no medium amongst them. Implacabiles plerumque laesae mulieres, Agrippina like, 1708“A woman, if she see her neighbour more neat or elegant, richer in tires, jewels, or
apparel, is enraged, and like a lioness sets upon her husband, rails at her, scoffs at her, and cannot abide her;” so
the Roman ladies in Tacitus did at Solonina, Cecinna's wife, 1709“because she had a better horse, and better furniture, as if she had hurt them with it;
they were much offended.” In like sort our gentlewomen do at their usual meetings, one repines or scoffs at another's
bravery and happiness. Myrsine, an Attic wench, was murdered of her fellows, 1710 “because she
did excel the rest in beauty,” Constantine, Agricult. l. 11. c. 7. Every village will yield
such examples.

Subsect. viii.

Emulation, Hatred, Faction, Desire of Revenge, Causes.

Out of this root of envy 1711spring those feral branches of faction, hatred, livor, emulation, which cause the like
grievances, and are, serrae animae, the saws of the soul, 1712consternationis pleni affectus,
affections full of desperate amazement; or as Cyprian describes emulation, it is 1713“a moth of the soul, a consumption, to make another man's happiness his misery, to
torture, crucify, and execute himself, to eat his own heart. Meat and drink can do such men no good, they do always
grieve, sigh, and groan, day and night without intermission, their breast is torn asunder:” and a little after,
1714“Whomsoever he is whom thou dost emulate and envy, he may avoid thee, but thou canst
neither avoid him nor thyself; wheresoever thou art he is with thee, thine enemy is ever in thy breast, thy destruction
is within thee, thou art a captive, bound hand and foot, as long as thou art malicious and envious, and canst not be
comforted. It was the devil's overthrow;” and whensoever thou art thoroughly affected with this passion, it will be
thine. Yet no perturbation so frequent, no passion so common.

Every society, corporation, and private family is full of it, it takes hold almost of all sorts of men, from the
prince to the ploughman, even amongst gossips it is to be seen, scarce three in a company but there is siding, faction,
emulation, between two of them, some simultas, jar, private grudge, heart-burning in the midst
of them. Scarce two gentlemen dwell together in the country, (if they be not near kin or linked in marriage) but there
is emulation betwixt them and their servants, some quarrel or some grudge betwixt their wives or children, friends and
followers, some contention about wealth, gentry, precedency, &c., by means of which, like the frog in 1716Aesop, “that
would swell till she was as big as an ox, burst herself at last;” they will stretch beyond their fortunes, callings,
and strive so long that they consume their substance in lawsuits, or otherwise in hospitality, feasting, fine clothes,
to get a few bombast titles, for ambitiosa paupertate laboramus omnes, to outbrave one another,
they will tire their bodies, macerate their souls, and through contentions or mutual invitations beggar themselves.
Scarce two great scholars in an age, but with bitter invectives they fall foul one on the other, and their adherents;
Scotists, Thomists, Reals, Nominals, Plato and Aristotle, Galenists and Paracelsians, &c., it holds in all
professions.

Honest 1717emulation
in studies, in all callings is not to be disliked, 'tis ingeniorum cos, as one calls it, the
whetstone of wit, the nurse of wit and valour, and those noble Romans out of this spirit did brave exploits. There is a
modest ambition, as Themistocles was roused up with the glory of Miltiades; Achilles' trophies moved Alexander,

'Tis a sluggish humour not to emulate or to sue at all, to withdraw himself, neglect, refrain from such places,
honours, offices, through sloth, niggardliness, fear, bashfulness, or otherwise, to which by his birth, place,
fortunes, education, he is called, apt, fit, and well able to undergo; but when it is immoderate, it is a plague and a
miserable pain. What a deal of money did Henry VIII. and Francis I. king of France, spend at that 1719famous interview? and how many vain
courtiers, seeking each to outbrave other, spent themselves, their livelihood and fortunes, and died beggars? 1720Adrian the Emperor was so galled with it, that he
killed all his equals; so did Nero. This passion made 1721Dionysius the tyrant banish Plato and Philoxenus the poet, because they did excel and eclipse
his glory, as he thought; the Romans exile Coriolanus, confine Camillus, murder Scipio; the Greeks by ostracism to
expel Aristides, Nicias, Alcibiades, imprison Theseus, make away Phocion, &c. When Richard I. and Philip of France
were fellow soldiers together, at the siege of Acon in the Holy Land, and Richard had approved himself to be the more
valiant man, insomuch that all men's eyes were upon him, it so galled Philip, Francum urebat Regis
victoria, saith mine 1722author, tam aegre ferebat Richardi gloriam, ut carpere dicta, calumniari
facta; that he cavilled at all his proceedings, and fell at length to open defiance; he could contain no longer,
but hasting home, invaded his territories, and professed open war. “Hatred stirs up contention,” Prov. x. 12, and they break out at last into immortal enmity, into virulency, and more than Vatinian
hate and rage; 1723they persecute each other, their friends, followers, and all their posterity, with bitter
taunts, hostile wars, scurrile invectives, libels, calumnies, fire, sword, and the like, and will not be reconciled.
Witness that Guelph and Ghibelline faction in Italy; that of the Adurni and Fregosi in Genoa; that of Cneius Papirius,
and Quintus Fabius in Rome; Caesar and Pompey; Orleans and Burgundy in France; York and Lancaster in England: yea, this
passion so rageth1724many times, that it subverts not men only, and families, but even populous cities.
1725Carthage and Corinth can witness as much, nay, flourishing kingdoms are brought into a
wilderness by it. This hatred, malice, faction, and desire of revenge, invented first all those racks and wheels,
strappadoes, brazen bulls, feral engines, prisons, inquisitions, severe laws to macerate and torment one another. How
happy might we be, and end our time with blessed days and sweet content, if we could contain ourselves, and, as we
ought to do, put up injuries, learn humility, meekness, patience, forget and forgive, as in 1726God's word we are enjoined, compose such final controversies amongst
ourselves, moderate our passions in this kind, “and think better of others,” as 1727Paul would have us, “than of ourselves: be of like affection one towards
another, and not avenge ourselves, but have peace with all men.” But being that we are so peevish and perverse,
insolent and proud, so factious and seditious, so malicious and envious; we do invicem
angariare, maul and vex one another, torture, disquiet, and precipitate ourselves into that gulf of woes and
cares, aggravate our misery and melancholy, heap upon us hell and eternal damnation.

Subsect. ix.

Anger, a Cause.

Anger, a perturbation, which carries the spirits outwards, preparing the body to melancholy, and madness itself:
Ira furor brevis est, “anger is temporary madness;” and as 1728Picolomineus accounts it, one of the three most violent passions.
1729Areteus sets it down for an especial cause (so doth Seneca, ep. 18. l.
1,) of this malady. 1730Magninus gives
the reason, Ex frequenti ira supra modum calefiunt; it overheats their bodies, and if it be too
frequent, it breaks out into manifest madness, saith St. Ambrose. 'Tis a known saying, Furor fit Iaesa
saepius palienlia, the most patient spirit that is, if he be often provoked, will be incensed to madness; it
will make a devil of a saint: and therefore Basil (belike) in his Homily de Ira, calls it
tenebras rationis, morbum animae, et daemonem pessimum; the darkening of our understanding, and
a bad angel. 1731Lucian, in Abdicato, tom. 1, will have this passion to work
this effect, especially in old men and women. “Anger and calumny” (saith he) “trouble them at first, and after a while
break out into madness: many things cause fury in women, especially if they love or hate overmuch, or envy, be much
grieved or angry; these things by little and little lead them on to this malady.” From a disposition they proceed to an
habit, for there is no difference between a mad man, and an angry man, in the time of his fit; anger, as Lactantius
describes it, L. de Ira Dei, ad Donatum, c. 5, is 1732saeva animi tempestas, &c., a cruel tempest of the mind;
“making his eye sparkle fire, and stare, teeth gnash in his head, his tongue stutter, his face pale, or red, and what
more filthy imitation can be of a mad man?”

They are void of reason, inexorable, blind, like beasts and monsters for the time, say and do they know not what,
curse, swear, rail, fight, and what not? How can a mad man do more? as he said in the comedy, 1734Iracundia non sum apud me, I am not mine own
man. If these fits be immoderate, continue long, or be frequent, without doubt they provoke madness. Montanus,
consil. 21, had a melancholy Jew to his patient, he ascribes this for a principal cause:
Irascebatur levibus de causis, he was easily moved to anger. Ajax had no other beginning of his
madness; and Charles the Sixth, that lunatic French king, fell into this misery, out of the extremity of his passion,
desire of revenge and malice, 1735incensed against the duke of Britain, he could neither eat, drink, nor sleep for some
days together, and in the end, about the calends of July, 1392, he became mad upon his horseback, drawing his sword,
striking such as came near him promiscuously, and so continued all the days of his life, Aemil., lib. 10. Gal. hist. Aegesippus de exid. urbis Hieros, l. 1.
c. 37, hath such a story of Herod, that out of an angry fit, became mad, 1736leaping out of his bed, he killed Jossippus, and played many such bedlam pranks, the whole
court could not rule him for a long time after: sometimes he was sorry and repented, much grieved for that he had done,
Postquam deferbuit ira, by and by outrageous again. In hot choleric bodies, nothing so soon
causeth madness, as this passion of anger, besides many other diseases, as Pelesius observes, cap.
21. l. 1. de hum. affect. causis; Sanguinem imminuit, fel auget: and as 1737Valesius controverts,
Med. controv., lib. 5. contro. 8, many times kills them quite out. If this were the worst of
this passion, it were more tolerable, 1738“but it
ruins and subverts whole towns, 1739cities, families, and kingdoms;” Nulla pestis humano generi pluris
stetit, saith Seneca, de Ira, lib. 1. No plague hath done mankind so much harm. Look
into our histories, and you shall almost meet with no other subject, but what a company 1740of harebrains have done in their
rage. We may do well therefore to put this in our procession amongst the rest; “From all blindness of heart, from
pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy, from envy, hatred and malice, anger, and all such pestiferous perturbations, good Lord
deliver us.”

Subsect. x.

Discontents, Cares, Miseries, &c. Causes.

Discontents, cares, crosses, miseries, or whatsoever it is, that shall cause any molestation of spirits, grief,
anguish, and perplexity, may well be reduced to this head, (preposterously placed here in some men's judgments they may
seem,) yet in that Aristotle in his 1741Rhetoric defines these
cares, as he doth envy, emulation, &c. still by grief, I think I may well rank them in this irascible row; being
that they are as the rest, both causes and symptoms of this disease, producing the like inconveniences, and are most
part accompanied with anguish and pain. The common etymology will evince it, Cura quasi cor uro,
Dementes curae, insomnes curae, damnosae curae, tristes, mordaces, carnifices, &c. biting, eating, gnawing,
cruel, bitter, sick, sad, unquiet, pale, tetric, miserable, intolerable cares, as the poets 1742call them, worldly cares, and are as many in number as the sea sands. 1743Galen, Fernelius, Felix Plater, Valescus de Taranta, &c., reckon afflictions,
miseries, even all these contentions, and vexations of the mind, as principal causes, in that they take away sleep,
hinder concoction, dry up the body, and consume the substance of it. They are not so many in number, but their causes
be as divers, and not one of a thousand free from them, or that can vindicate himself, whom that Ate
dea,

Homer's Goddess Ate hath not involved into this discontented 1745rank, or plagued with
some misery or other. Hyginus, fab. 220, to this purpose hath a pleasant tale. Dame Cura by
chance went over a brook, and taking up some of the dirty slime, made an image of it; Jupiter eftsoons coming by, put
life to it, but Cura and Jupiter could not agree what name to give him, or who should own him; the matter was referred
to Saturn as judge; he gave this arbitrement: his name shall be Homo ab humo, Cura eum possideat
quamdiu vivat, Care shall have him whilst he lives, Jupiter his soul, and Tellus his body when he dies. But to
leave tales. A general cause, a continuate cause, an inseparable accident, to all men, is discontent, care, misery;
were there no other particular affliction (which who is free from?) to molest a man in this life, the very cogitation
of that common misery were enough to macerate, and make him weary of his life; to think that he can never be secure,
but still in danger, sorrow, grief, and persecution. For to begin at the hour of his birth, as 1746Pliny doth elegantly describe it, “he is born naked, and falls 1747a whining at the very first: he is swaddled, and bound up like a prisoner, cannot help
himself, and so he continues to his life's end.” Cujusque ferae pabulum, saith 1748Seneca, impatient of heat and cold, impatient of
labour, impatient of idleness, exposed to fortune's contumelies. To a naked mariner Lucretius compares him, cast on
shore by shipwreck, cold and comfortless in an unknown land: 1749no estate, age, sex, can secure himself from this common misery. “A man that is born of a woman
is of short continuance, and full of trouble,” Job xiv. 1, 22. “And while his flesh is
upon him he shall be sorrowful, and while his soul is in him it shall mourn. All his days are sorrow and his travels
griefs: his heart also taketh not rest in the night.” Eccles. ii. 23, and ii. 11. “All
that is in it is sorrow and vexation of spirit. 1750Ingress, progress, regress, egress, much alike: blindness seizeth on us in the beginning,
labour in the middle, grief in the end, error in all. What day ariseth to us without some grief, care, or anguish? Or
what so secure and pleasing a morning have we seen, that hath not been overcast before the evening?” One is miserable,
another ridiculous, a third odious. One complains of this grievance, another of that. Aliquando nervi,
aliquando pedes vexant, (Seneca) nunc distillatio, nunc epatis morbus; nunc deest, nunc
superest sanguis: now the head aches, then the feet, now the lungs, then the liver, &c. Huic sensus exuberat, sed est pudori degener sanguis, &c. He is rich, but base born; he is noble, but
poor; a third hath means, but he wants health peradventure, or wit to manage his estate; children vex one, wife a
second, &c. Nemo facile cum conditione sua concordat, no man is pleased with his fortune, a
pound of sorrow is familiarly mixed with a dram of content, little or no joy, little comfort, but 1751everywhere danger, contention, anxiety, in all places: go where thou wilt, and thou shalt find
discontents, cares, woes, complaints, sickness, diseases, encumbrances, exclamations: “If thou look into the market,
there” (saith 1752 Chrysostom) “is brawling and contention; if to the court, there knavery and flattery,
&c.; if to a private man's house, there's cark and care, heaviness,” &c. As he said of old,

No creature so miserable as man, so generally molested, 1754“in miseries of body, in miseries of mind, miseries of heart, in miseries asleep, in
miseries awake, in miseries wheresoever he turns,” as Bernard found, Nunquid tentatio est vita humana
super terram? A mere temptation is our life, (Austin, confess. lib. 10. cap. 28,)
catena perpetuorum malorum, et quis potest molestias et difficultates pati? Who can endure the
miseries of it? 1755“In prosperity we are insolent and intolerable, dejected in adversity, in all fortunes foolish
and miserable.” 1756“In adversity I wish for prosperity, and in prosperity I am afraid of adversity. What
mediocrity may be found? Where is no temptation? What condition of life is free?” 1757“Wisdom hath labour annexed to it, glory, envy; riches and cares, children and
encumbrances, pleasure and diseases, rest and beggary, go together: as if a man were therefore born” (as the Platonists
hold) “to be punished in this life for some precedent sins.” Or that, as 1758Pliny complains, “Nature may be rather accounted a stepmother, than a mother unto us, all
things considered: no creature's life so brittle, so full of fear, so mad, so furious; only man is plagued with envy,
discontent, griefs, covetousness, ambition, superstition.” Our whole life is an Irish sea, wherein there is nought to
be expected but tempestuous storms and troublesome waves, and those infinite,

no halcyonian times, wherein a man can hold himself secure, or agree with his present estate; but as Boethius
infers, 1760“there is something in every one of us which before trial we seek, and having tried
abhor: 1761 we earnestly
wish, and eagerly covet, and are eftsoons weary of it.” Thus between hope and fear, suspicions, angers, 1762Inter spemque metumque, timores inter et
iras, betwixt falling in, falling out, &c., we bangle away our best days, befool out our times, we lead a
contentious, discontent, tumultuous, melancholy, miserable life; insomuch, that if we could foretell what was to come,
and it put to our choice, we should rather refuse than accept of this painful life. In a word, the world itself is a
maze, a labyrinth of errors, a desert, a wilderness, a den of thieves, cheaters, &c., full of filthy puddles,
horrid rocks, precipitiums, an ocean of adversity, an heavy yoke, wherein infirmities and calamities overtake, and
follow one another, as the sea waves; and if we scape Scylla, we fall foul on Charybdis, and so in perpetual fear,
labour, anguish, we run from one plague, one mischief, one burden to another, duram servientes
servitutem, and you may as soon separate weight from lead, heat from fire, moistness from water, brightness from
the sun, as misery, discontent, care, calamity, danger, from a man. Our towns and cities are but so many dwellings of
human misery. “In which grief and sorrow” (1763as he right well observes out of Solon) “innumerable troubles, labours of mortal men, and
all manner of vices, are included, as in so many pens.” Our villages are like molehills, and men as so many emmets,
busy, busy still, going to and fro, in and out, and crossing one another's projects, as the lines of several sea-cards
cut each other in a globe or map. “Now light and merry,” but (1764as one follows it) “by-and-by sorrowful and heavy; now hoping, then distrusting; now
patient, tomorrow crying out; now pale, then red; running, sitting, sweating, trembling, halting,” &c. Some few
amongst the rest, or perhaps one of a thousand, may be Pullus Jovis, in the world's esteem, Gallinae
filius albae, an happy and fortunate man, ad invidiam felix, because rich, fair, well
allied, in honour and office; yet peradventure ask himself, and he will say, that of all others 1765he is most miserable and unhappy. A fair
shoe, Hic soccus novus, elegans, as he 1766said, sed nescis ubi urat, but thou knowest not where it pincheth. It
is not another man's opinion can make me happy: but as 1767Seneca well hath it, “He is a miserable wretch that doth not account himself happy,
though he be sovereign lord of a world: he is not happy, if he think himself not to be so; for what availeth it what
thine estate is, or seem to others, if thou thyself dislike it?” A common humour it is of all men to think well of
other men's fortunes, and dislike their own: 1768Cui placet alterius, sua nimirum est odio sors; but 1769qui fit Mecoenas, &c., how
comes it to pass, what's the cause of it? Many men are of such a perverse nature, they are well pleased with nothing,
(saith 1770 Theodoret,) “neither with riches nor poverty, they complain when they are well and when
they are sick, grumble at all fortunes, prosperity and adversity; they are troubled in a cheap year, in a barren,
plenty or not plenty, nothing pleaseth them, war nor peace, with children, nor without.” This for the most part is the
humour of us all, to be discontent, miserable, and most unhappy, as we think at least; and show me him that is not so,
or that ever was otherwise. Quintus Metellus his felicity is infinitely admired amongst the Romans, insomuch that as
1771Paterculus mentioneth of him, you can scarce find of any nation, order, age, sex, one for
happiness to be compared unto him: he had, in a word, Bona animi, corporis et fortunae, goods
of mind, body, and fortune, so had P. Mutianus, 1772Crassus. Lampsaca, that Lacedaemonian lady, was such another in 1773Pliny's conceit, a king's wife, a
king's mother, a king's daughter: and all the world esteemed as much of Polycrates of Samos. The Greeks brag of their
Socrates, Phocion, Aristides; the Psophidians in particular of their Aglaus, Omni vita felix, ab omni
periculo immunis (which by the way Pausanias held impossible;) the Romans of their 1774 Cato, Curius, Fabricius, for their composed fortunes, and retired estates, government of
passions, and contempt of the world: yet none of all these were happy, or free from discontent, neither Metellus,
Crassus, nor Polycrates, for he died a violent death, and so did Cato; and how much evil doth Lactantius and Theodoret
speak of Socrates, a weak man, and so of the rest. There is no content in this life, but as 1775he said, “All is vanity and vexation of spirit;” lame and
imperfect. Hadst thou Sampson's hair, Milo's strength, Scanderbeg's arm, Solomon's wisdom, Absalom's beauty, Croesus'
wealth, Pasetis obulum, Caesar's valour, Alexander's spirit, Tully's or Demosthenes' eloquence,
Gyges' ring, Perseus' Pegasus, and Gorgon's head, Nestor's years to come, all this would not make thee absolute; give
thee content, and true happiness in this life, or so continue it. Even in the midst of all our mirth, jollity, and
laughter, is sorrow and grief, or if there be true happiness amongst us, 'tis but for a time,

a fair morning turns to a lowering afternoon. Brutus and Cassius, once renowned, both eminently happy, yet you shall
scarce find two (saith Paterculus) quos fortuna maturius destiturit, whom fortune sooner
forsook. Hannibal, a conqueror all his life, met with his match, and was subdued at last, Occurrit
forti, qui mage fortis erit. One is brought in triumph, as Caesar into Rome, Alcibiades into Athens,
coronis aureis donatus, crowned, honoured, admired; by-and-by his statues demolished, he hissed
out, massacred, &c. 1777Magnus
Gonsalva, that famous Spaniard, was of the prince and people at first honoured, approved; forthwith confined and
banished. Admirandas actiones; graves plerunque sequuntur invidiae, et acres calumniae: 'tis
Polybius his observation, grievous enmities, and bitter calumnies, commonly follow renowned actions. One is born rich,
dies a beggar; sound today, sick tomorrow; now in most flourishing estate, fortunate and happy, by-and-by deprived of
his goods by foreign enemies, robbed by thieves, spoiled, captivated, impoverished, as they of 1778“Rabbah put under iron saws, and under iron harrows, and under
axes of iron, and cast into the tile kiln,”

He that erst marched like Xerxes with innumerable armies, as rich as Croesus, now shifts for himself in a poor
cock-boat, is bound in iron chains, with Bajazet the Turk, and a footstool with Aurelian, for a tyrannising conqueror
to trample on. So many casualties there are, that as Seneca said of a city consumed with fire, Una
dies interest inter maximum civitatem et nullam, one day betwixt a great city and none: so many grievances from
outward accidents, and from ourselves, our own indiscretion, inordinate appetite, one day betwixt a man and no man. And
which is worse, as if discontents and miseries would not come fast enough upon us: homo homini
daemon, we maul, persecute, and study how to sting, gall, and vex one another with mutual hatred, abuses,
injuries; preying upon and devouring as so many, 1780ravenous birds; and as jugglers, panders, bawds, cozening one another; or raging as 1781wolves, tigers, and devils, we take a delight to torment one another; men are evil,
wicked, malicious, treacherous, and 1782naught, not loving one another, or loving themselves, not hospitable, charitable, nor
sociable as they ought to be, but counterfeit, dissemblers, ambidexters, all for their own ends, hard-hearted,
merciless, pitiless, and to benefit themselves, they care not what mischief they procure to others. 1783Praxinoe and Gorgo in the poet, when they had got in
to see those costly sights, they then cried bene est, and would thrust out all the rest: when
they are rich themselves, in honour, preferred, full, and have even that they would, they debar others of those
pleasures which youth requires, and they formerly have enjoyed. He sits at table in a soft chair at ease, but he doth
remember in the mean time that a tired waiter stands behind him, “an hungry fellow ministers to him full, he is athirst
that gives him drink” (saith 1784Epictetus) “and is silent whilst he speaks his pleasure: pensive, sad, when he laughs.”
Pleno se proluit auro: he feasts, revels, and profusely spends, hath variety of robes, sweet
music, ease, and all the pleasure the world can afford, whilst many an hunger-starved poor creature pines in the
street, wants clothes to cover him, labours hard all day long, runs, rides for a trifle, fights peradventure from sun
to sun, sick and ill, weary, full of pain and grief, is in great distress and sorrow of heart. He loathes and scorns
his inferior, hates or emulates his equal, envies his superior, insults over all such as are under him, as if he were
of another species, a demigod, not subject to any fall, or human infirmities. Generally they love not, are not beloved
again: they tire out others' bodies with continual labour, they themselves living at ease, caring for none else,
sibi nati; and are so far many times from putting to their helping hand, that they seek all
means to depress, even most worthy and well deserving, better than themselves, those whom they are by the laws of
nature bound to relieve and help, as much as in them lies, they will let them caterwaul, starve, beg, and hang, before
they will any ways (though it be in their power) assist or ease: 1785so unnatural are they for the most part, so unregardful; so hard-hearted, so churlish,
proud, insolent, so dogged, of so bad a disposition. And being so brutish, so devilishly bent one towards another, how
is it possible but that we should be discontent of all sides, full of cares, woes, and miseries?

If this be not a sufficient proof of their discontent and misery, examine every condition and calling apart. Kings,
princes, monarchs, and magistrates seem to be most happy, but look into their estate, you shall 1786find them to be most encumbered with cares, in perpetual fear, agony, suspicion, jealousy:
that, as 1787he said of a crown, if they knew but the discontents that accompany it, they would not
stoop to take it up. Quem mihi regent dabis (saith Chrysostom) non curis
plenum? What king canst thou show me, not full of cares? 1788“Look not on his crown, but consider his afflictions; attend not his number of servants, but
multitude of crosses.” Nihil aliud potestas culminis, quam tempestas mentis, as Gregory seconds
him; sovereignty is a tempest of the soul: Sylla like they have brave titles, but terrible fits: splendorem titulo, cruciatum animo: which made 1789Demosthenes vow, si vel ad tribunal, vel ad interitum duceretur: if to
be a judge, or to be condemned, were put to his choice, he would be condemned. Rich men are in the same predicament;
what their pains are, stulti nesciunt, ipsi sentiunt: they feel, fools perceive not, as I shall
prove elsewhere, and their wealth is brittle, like children's rattles: they come and go, there is no certainty in them:
those whom they elevate, they do as suddenly depress, and leave in a vale of misery. The middle sort of men are as so
many asses to bear burdens; or if they be free, and live at ease, they spend themselves, and consume their bodies and
fortunes with luxury and riot, contention, emulation, &c. The poor I reserve for another 1790place and their discontents.

For particular professions, I hold as of the rest, there's no content or security in any; on what course will you
pitch, how resolve? to be a divine, 'tis contemptible in the world's esteem; to be a lawyer, 'tis to be a wrangler; to
be a physician, 1791pudet lotii, 'tis loathed; a philosopher, a madman; an alchemist, a
beggar; a poet, esurit, an hungry jack; a musician, a player; a schoolmaster, a drudge; an
husbandman, an emmet; a merchant, his gains are uncertain; a mechanician, base; a chirurgeon, fulsome; a tradesman, a
1792liar; a tailor, a thief; a serving-man, a slave; a soldier, a butcher; a smith, or a metalman,
the pot's never from his nose; a courtier a parasite, as he could find no tree in the wood to hang himself; I can show
no state of life to give content. The like you may say of all ages; children live in a perpetual slavery, still under
that tyrannical government of masters; young men, and of riper years, subject to labour, and a thousand cares of the
world, to treachery, falsehood, and cozenage,

1794 old
are full of aches in their bones, cramps and convulsions, silicernia, dull of hearing, weak
sighted, hoary, wrinkled, harsh, so much altered as that they cannot know their own face in a glass, a burthen to
themselves and others, after 70 years, “all is sorrow” (as David hath it), they do not live but linger. If they be
sound, they fear diseases; if sick, weary of their lives: Non est vivere, sed valere vita. One
complains of want, a second of servitude, 1795another of a secret or incurable disease; of some deformity of body, of some loss, danger,
death of friends, shipwreck, persecution, imprisonment, disgrace, repulse, 1796 contumely, calumny, abuse, injury, contempt,
ingratitude, unkindness, scoffs, flouts, unfortunate marriage, single life, too many children, no children, false
servants, unhappy children, barrenness, banishment, oppression, frustrate hopes and ill-success, &c.

Talking Fabius will be tired before he can tell half of them; they are the subject of whole volumes, and shall (some
of them) be more opportunely dilated elsewhere. In the meantime thus much I may say of them, that generally they
crucify the soul of man, 1798attenuate our bodies, dry them, wither them, shrivel them up like old apples, make them as so
many anatomies (1799ossa atque
pellis est totus, ita curis macet) they cause tempus foedum et squalidum, cumbersome
days, ingrataque tempora, slow, dull, and heavy times: make us howl, roar, and tear our hairs,
as sorrow did in 1800Cebes' table, and groan for the very anguish of our souls. Our hearts fail us as David's did,
Psal. xl. 12, “for innumerable troubles that compassed him;” and we are ready to confess
with Hezekiah, Isaiah lviii. 17, “behold, for felicity I had bitter grief;” to weep with
Heraclitus, to curse the day of our birth with Jeremy, xx. 14, and our stars with Job: to
hold that axiom of Silenus, 1801“better never to have been born, and the best next of all, to die quickly:” or if we must live,
to abandon the world, as Timon did; creep into caves and holes, as our anchorites; cast all into the sea, as Crates
Thebanus; or as Theombrotus Ambrociato's 400 auditors, precipitate ourselves to be rid of these miseries.

Subsect. xi.

Concupiscible Appetite, as Desires, Ambition, Causes.

These concupiscible and irascible appetites are as the two twists of a rope, mutually mixed one with the other, and
both twining about the heart: both good, as Austin, holds, l. 14. c. 9. de civ. Dei, 1802“if they
be moderate; both pernicious if they be exorbitant.” This concupiscible appetite, howsoever it may seem to carry with
it a show of pleasure and delight, and our concupiscences most part affect us with content and a pleasing object, yet
if they be in extremes, they rack and wring us on the other side. A true saying it is, “Desire hath no rest;” is
infinite in itself, endless; and as 1803one calls it, a perpetual rack, 1804or horse-mill, according to Austin, still going round as in a ring. They are not so continual,
as divers, felicius atomos denumerare possem, saith 1805Bernard, quam motus cordis; nunc haec,
nunc illa cogito, you may as well reckon up the motes in the sun as them. 1806“It extends itself to everything,” as Guianerius will have it, “that is superfluously sought
after:”' or to any 1807fervent desire,
as Fernelius interprets it; be it in what kind soever, it tortures if immoderate, and is (according to 1808 Plater and
others) an especial cause of melancholy. Multuosis concupiscentiis dilaniantur cogitationes
meae, 1809Austin confessed, that he
was torn a pieces with his manifold desires: and so doth 1810 Bernard complain, “that he could not rest for them a minute of an hour: this I would
have, and that, and then I desire to be such and such.” 'Tis a hard matter therefore to confine them, being they are so
various and many, impossible to apprehend all. I will only insist upon some few of the chief, and most noxious in their
kind, as that exorbitant appetite and desire of honour, which we commonly call ambition; love of money, which is
covetousness, and that greedy desire of gain: self-love, pride, and inordinate desire of vainglory or applause, love of
study in excess; love of women (which will require a just volume of itself), of the other I will briefly speak, and in
their order.

Ambition, a proud covetousness, or a dry thirst of honour, a great torture of the mind, composed of envy, pride, and
covetousness, a gallant madness, one 1811defines it a pleasant poison, Ambrose, “a canker of the soul, an hidden plague:” 1812Bernard, “a secret poison, the father of livor, and mother of hypocrisy, the moth of holiness,
and cause of madness, crucifying and disquieting all that it takes hold of.” 1813Seneca calls it, rem solicitam, timidam, vanam, ventosam, a windy
thing, a vain, solicitous, and fearful thing. For commonly they that, like Sisyphus, roll this restless stone of
ambition, are in a perpetual agony, still 1814 perplexed, semper taciti, tritesque recedunt (Lucretius),
doubtful, timorous, suspicious, loath to offend in word or deed, still cogging and colloguing, embracing, capping,
cringing, applauding, flattering, fleering, visiting, waiting at men's doors, with all affability, counterfeit honesty
and humility. 1815If that will not serve, if once this humour (as 1816Cyprian describes it) possess his thirsty soul, ambitionis salsugo ubi
bibulam animam possidet, by hook and by crook he will obtain it, “and from his hole he will climb to all honours
and offices, if it be possible for him to get up, flattering one, bribing another, he will leave no means unessay'd to
win all.” 1817It is a wonder to see how slavishly these kind of men subject themselves, when they are about a
suit, to every inferior person; what pains they will take, run, ride, cast, plot, countermine, protest and swear, vow,
promise, what labours undergo, early up, down late; how obsequious and affable they are, how popular and courteous, how
they grin and fleer upon every man they meet; with what feasting and inviting, how they spend themselves and their
fortunes, in seeking that many times, which they had much better be without; as 1818Cyneas the orator told Pyrrhus: with what waking nights, painful hours, anxious thoughts, and
bitterness of mind, inter spemque metumque, distracted and tired, they consume the interim of
their time. There can be no greater plague for the present. If they do obtain their suit, which with such cost and
solicitude they have sought, they are not so freed, their anxiety is anew to begin, for they are never satisfied,
nihil aliud nisi imperium spirant, their thoughts, actions, endeavours are all for sovereignty
and honour, like 1819Lues Sforza that huffing Duke of Milan, “a man of singular wisdom, but profound ambition, born
to his own, and to the destruction of Italy,” though it be to their own ruin, and friends' undoing, they will contend,
they may not cease, but as a dog in a wheel, a bird in a cage, or a squirrel in a chain, so 1820Budaeus compares them; 1821they climb and climb still, with much labour, but never make an end, never at the top. A
knight would be a baronet, and then a lord, and then a viscount, and then an earl, &c.; a doctor, a dean, and then
a bishop; from tribune to praetor; from bailiff to major; first this office, and then that; as Pyrrhus in 1822Plutarch, they will first have Greece, then Africa,
and then Asia, and swell with Aesop's frog so long, till in the end they burst, or come down with Sejanus, ad Gemonias scalas, and break their own necks; or as Evangelus the piper in Lucian, that blew his pipe so
long, till he fell down dead. If he chance to miss, and have a canvass, he is in a hell on the other side; so dejected,
that he is ready to hang himself, turn heretic, Turk, or traitor in an instant. Enraged against his enemies, he rails,
swears, fights, slanders, detracts, envies, murders: and for his own part, si appetitum explere non
potest, furore corripitur; if he cannot satisfy his desire (as 1823Bodine writes) he runs mad. So that both ways, hit or miss, he is distracted so long as his
ambition lasts, he can look for no other but anxiety and care, discontent and grief in the meantime, 1824madness itself, or violent death in the end. The
event of this is common to be seen in populous cities, or in princes' courts, for a courtier's life (as Budaeus
describes it) “is a 1825gallimaufry of ambition, lust, fraud, imposture, dissimulation, detraction, envy, pride;
1826the court, a common conventicle of flatterers, time-servers, politicians,” &c.; or as
1827 Anthony Perez will, “the suburbs of hell
itself.” If you will see such discontented persons, there you shall likely find them. 1828And which he observed of the markets of old
Rome,

Qui perjurum convenire vult hominem, mitto in Comitium;

Qui mendacem et gloriosum, apud Cluasinae sacrum;

Dites, damnosos maritos, sub basilica quaerito, &c.

Perjured knaves, knights of the post, liars, crackers, bad husbands, &c. keep their several stations; they do
still, and always did in every commonwealth.

Subsect. xii.

Φιλαργυρία, Covetousness, a Cause.

Plutarch, in his 1829book whether the diseases of the body be more grievous than those of the soul, is of
opinion, “if you will examine all the causes of our miseries in this life, you shall find them most part to have had
their beginning from stubborn anger, that furious desire of contention, or some unjust or immoderate affection, as
covetousness, &c.” From whence “are wars and contentions amongst you?” 1830St. James asks: I will add usury, fraud, rapine, simony, oppression, lying, swearing,
bearing false witness, &c. are they not from this fountain of covetousness, that greediness in getting, tenacity in
keeping, sordidity in spending; that they are so wicked, 1831“unjust against God, their
neighbour, themselves;” all comes hence. “The desire of money is the root of all evil, and they that lust after it,
pierce themselves through with many sorrows,” 1 Tim. vi. 10. Hippocrates therefore in his
Epistle to Crateva, an herbalist, gives him this good counsel, that if it were possible, 1832 “amongst other herbs, he should cut up that weed of covetousness by the roots, that
there be no remainder left, and then know this for a certainty, that together with their bodies, thou mayst quickly
cure all the diseases of their minds.” For it is indeed the pattern, image, epitome of all melancholy, the fountain of
many miseries, much discontented care and woe; this “inordinate, or immoderate desire of gain, to get or keep money,”
as 1833Bonaventure defines it: or, as Austin describes it, a madness of the soul, Gregory a torture;
Chrysostom, an insatiable drunkenness; Cyprian, blindness, speciosum supplicium, a plague
subverting kingdoms, families, an 1834incurable disease; Budaeus, an ill habit, 1835“yielding to no remedies:” neither Aesculapius nor Plutus can cure them: a continual
plague, saith Solomon, and vexation of spirit, another hell. I know there be some of opinion, that covetous men are
happy, and worldly, wise, that there is more pleasure in getting of wealth than in spending, and no delight in the
world like unto it. 'Twas 1836Bias'
problem of old, “With what art thou not weary? with getting money. What is most delectable? to gain.” What is it, trow
you, that makes a poor man labour all his lifetime, carry such great burdens, fare so hardly, macerate himself, and
endure so much misery, undergo such base offices with so great patience, to rise up early, and lie down late, if there
were not an extraordinary delight in getting and keeping of money? What makes a merchant that hath no need,
satis superque domi, to range all over the world, through all those intemperate 1837Zones of heat and cold;
voluntarily to venture his life, and be content with such miserable famine, nasty usage, in a stinking ship; if there
were not a pleasure and hope to get money, which doth season the rest, and mitigate his indefatigable pains? What makes
them go into the bowels of the earth, an hundred fathom deep, endangering their dearest lives, enduring damps and
filthy smells, when they have enough already, if they could be content, and no such cause to labour, but an
extraordinary delight they take in riches. This may seem plausible at first show, a popular and strong argument; but
let him that so thinks, consider better of it, and he shall soon perceive, that it is far otherwise than he supposeth;
it may be haply pleasing at the first, as most part all melancholy is. For such men likely have some lucida intervalla, pleasant symptoms intermixed; but you must note that of 1838Chrysostom, “'Tis one thing to be rich, another
to be covetous:” generally they are all fools, dizzards, madmen, 1839miserable wretches, living besides themselves, sine arte fruendi,
in perpetual slavery, fear, suspicion, sorrow, and discontent, plus aloes quam mellis habent;
and are indeed, “rather possessed by their money, than possessors:” as 1840Cyprian hath it, mancipati
pecuniis; bound prentice to their goods, as 1841Pliny; or as Chrysostom, servi divitiarum, slaves and drudges to their
substance; and we may conclude of them all, as 1842Valerius doth of Ptolomaeus king of Cyprus, “He was in title a king of that island, but in his
mind, a miserable drudge of money:”

wanting his liberty, which is better than gold. Damasippus the Stoic, in Horace, proves that all mortal men dote by
fits, some one way, some another, but that covetous men 1844are madder than the rest; and he
that shall truly look into their estates, and examine their symptoms, shall find no better of them, but that they are
all 1845fools, as Nabal was, Re et nomine (1. Reg.
15.) For what greater folly can there be, or 1846 madness, than to macerate himself
when he need not? and when, as Cyprian notes, 1847“he may be freed from his burden, and eased of his pains, will go on still, his wealth
increasing, when he hath enough, to get more, to live besides himself,” to starve his genius, keep back from his wife
1848and children, neither letting them nor other friends use or enjoy that which is theirs by
right, and which they much need perhaps; like a hog, or dog in the manger, he doth only keep it, because it shall do
nobody else good, hurting himself and others: and for a little momentary pelf, damn his own soul? They are commonly sad
and tetric by nature, as Achab's spirit was because he could not get Naboth's vineyard, (1. Reg.
22.) and if he lay out his money at any time, though it be to necessary uses, to his own children's good, he
brawls and scolds, his heart is heavy, much disquieted he is, and loath to part from it: Miser
abstinet et timet uti, Hor. He is of a wearish, dry, pale constitution, and cannot sleep for cares and worldly
business; his riches, saith Solomon, will not let him sleep, and unnecessary business which he heapeth on himself; or
if he do sleep, 'tis a very unquiet, interrupt, unpleasing sleep: with his bags in his arms,

——— congestis undique sacc

indormit inhians ———

And though he be at a banquet, or at some merry feast, “he sighs for grief of heart” (as 1849Cyprian hath it) “and cannot sleep though it be upon a down bed; his wearish body takes
no rest,” 1850“troubled in his abundance, and sorrowful in plenty, unhappy for the present, and more unhappy
in the life to come.” Basil. He is a perpetual drudge, 1851restless in his thoughts, and never satisfied, a slave, a wretch, a dust-worm, semper quod idolo suo immolet, sedulus observat Cypr. prolog. ad sermon still
seeking what sacrifice he may offer to his golden god, per fas et nefas, he cares not how, his
trouble is endless, 1852crescunt divitiae, tamen curtae nescio quid semper abest rei: his
wealth increaseth, and the more he hath, the more 1853he wants: like Pharaoh's lean kine, which devoured the fat, and were not satisfied. 1854Austin therefore defines covetousness, quarumlibet rerum inhonestam et
insatiabilem cupiditatem a dishonest and insatiable desire of gain; and in one of his epistles compares it to
hell; 1855“which devours all, and yet never hath enough, a bottomless pit,” an endless misery;
in quem scopulum avaritiae cadaverosi senes utplurimum impingunt, and that which is their
greatest corrosive, they are in continual suspicion, fear, and distrust, He thinks his own wife and children are so
many thieves, and go about to cozen him, his servants are all false:

Rem suam periisse, seque eradicarier,

Et divum atque hominum clamat continuo fidem,

De suo tigillo si qua exit foras.

If his doors creek, then out he cries anon,

His goods are gone, and he is quite undone.

Timidus Plutus, an old proverb, As fearful as Plutus: so doth Aristophanes and Lucian bring
him in fearful still, pale, anxious, suspicious, and trusting no man, 1856“They are afraid of tempests for their corn; they are afraid of their friends lest they
should ask something of them, beg or borrow; they are afraid of their enemies lest they hurt them, thieves lest they
rob them; they are afraid of war and afraid of peace, afraid of rich and afraid of poor; afraid of all.” Last of all,
they are afraid of want, that they shall die beggars, which makes them lay up still, and dare not use that they have:
what if a dear year come, or dearth, or some loss? and were it not that they are both to 1857lay out money on a rope, they would be hanged forthwith, and sometimes
die to save charges, and make away themselves, if their corn and cattle miscarry; though they have abundance left, as
1858Agellius notes. 1859Valerius makes mention of one that in a famine sold a mouse for 200 pence, and famished
himself: such are their cares, 1860griefs and perpetual fears. These symptoms are elegantly expressed by Theophrastus in his
character of a covetous man; 1861“lying in bed, he asked his wife whether she shut the trunks and chests fast, the
cap-case be sealed, and whether the hall door be bolted; and though she say all is well, he riseth out of his bed in
his shirt, barefoot and barelegged, to see whether it be so, with a dark lantern searching every corner, scarce
sleeping a wink all night.” Lucian in that pleasant and witty dialogue called Gallus, brings in Mycillus the cobbler
disputing with his cock, sometimes Pythagoras; where after much speech pro and con, to prove the happiness of a mean
estate, and discontents of a rich man, Pythagoras' cock in the end, to illustrate by examples that which he had said,
brings him to Gnyphon the usurer's house at midnight, and after that to Encrates; whom, they found both awake, casting
up their accounts, and telling of their money, 1862lean, dry, pale and anxious, still
suspecting lest somebody should make a hole through the wall, and so get in; or if a rat or mouse did but stir,
starting upon a sudden, and running to the door to see whether all were fast. Plautus, in his Aulularia, makes old
Euclio 1863commanding Staphyla his wife to shut the doors fast, and the fire to be put out, lest
anybody should make that an errand to come to his house: when he washed his hands, 1864he was
loath to fling away the foul water, complaining that he was undone, because the smoke got out of his roof. And as he
went from home, seeing a crow scratch upon the muck-hill, returned in all haste, taking it for malum
omen, an ill sign, his money was digged up; with many such. He that will but observe their actions, shall find
these and many such passages not feigned for sport, but really performed, verified indeed by such covetous and
miserable wretches, and that it is,

Subsect. xiii.

Love of Gaming, &c. and pleasures immoderate; Causes.

It is a wonder to see, how many poor, distressed, miserable wretches, one shall meet almost in every path and
street, begging for an alms, that have been well descended, and sometimes in flourishing estate, now ragged, tattered,
and ready to be starved, lingering out a painful life, in discontent and grief of body and mind, and all through
immoderate lust, gaming, pleasure and riot. 'Tis the common end of all sensual epicures and brutish prodigals, that are
stupefied and carried away headlong with their several pleasures and lusts. Cebes in his table, St. Ambrose in his
second book of Abel and Cain, and amongst the rest Lucian in his tract de Mercede conductis,
hath excellent well deciphered such men's proceedings in his picture of Opulentia, whom he feigns to dwell on the top
of a high mount, much sought after by many suitors; at their first coming they are generally entertained by pleasure
and dalliance, and have all the content that possibly may be given, so long as their money lasts: but when their means
fail, they are contemptibly thrust out at a back door, headlong, and there left to shame, reproach, despair. And he at
first that had so many attendants, parasites, and followers, young and lusty, richly arrayed, and all the dainty fare
that might be had, with all kind of welcome and good respect, is now upon a sudden stripped of all, 1866pale, naked, old, diseased and forsaken, cursing his stars, and ready to strangle
himself; having no other company but repentance, sorrow, grief, derision, beggary, and contempt, which are his daily
attendants to his life's end. As the 1867prodigal
son had exquisite music, merry company, dainty fare at first; but a sorrowful reckoning in the end; so have all such
vain delights and their followers. 1868Tristes voluptatum exitus, et quisquis voluptatum suarum reminisci volet, intelliget, as bitter as gall and
wormwood is their last; grief of mind, madness itself. The ordinary rocks upon which such men do impinge and
precipitate themselves, are cards, dice, hawks, and hounds, Insanum venandi studium, one calls
it, insanae substructiones: their mad structures, disports, plays, &c., when they are
unseasonably used, imprudently handled, and beyond their fortunes. Some men are consumed by mad fantastical buildings,
by making galleries, cloisters, terraces, walks, orchards, gardens, pools, rillets, bowers, and such like places of
pleasure; Inutiles domos, 1869Xenophon calls them, which howsoever they be delightsome things in themselves, and acceptable
to all beholders, an ornament, and benefiting some great men: yet unprofitable to others, and the sole overthrow of
their estates. Forestus in his observations hath an example of such a one that became melancholy upon the like
occasion, having consumed his substance in an unprofitable building, which would afterward yield him no advantage.
Others, I say, are 1870 overthrown by those mad sports of hawking and hunting; honest recreations, and fit for
some great men, but not for every base inferior person; whilst they will maintain their falconers, dogs, and hunting
nags, their wealth, saith 1871Salmutze, “runs away with hounds, and their fortunes fly away with hawks.” They persecute
beasts so long, till in the end they themselves degenerate into beasts, as 1872Agrippa taxeth them, 1873Actaeon like, for as he was eaten to death by his own dogs, so do they devour themselves and
their patrimonies, in such idle and unnecessary disports, neglecting in the mean time their more necessary business,
and to follow their vocations. Over-mad too sometimes are our great men in delighting, and doting too much on it.
1874“When they drive poor husbandmen from their tillage,” as 1875Sarisburiensis objects, Polycrat. l. 1. c. 4, “fling down
country farms, and whole towns, to make parks, and forests, starving men to feed beasts, and 1876punishing in the mean time such a man that shall molest their game, more severely than
him that is otherwise a common hacker, or a notorious thief.” But great men are some ways to be excused, the meaner
sort have no evasion why they should not be counted mad. Poggius the Florentine tells a merry story to this purpose,
condemning the folly and impertinent business of such kind of persons. A physician of Milan, saith he, that cured mad
men, had a pit of water in his house, in which he kept his patients, some up to the knees, some to the girdle, some to
the chin, pro modo insaniae, as they were more or less affected. One of them by chance, that
was well recovered, stood in the door, and seeing a gallant ride by with a hawk on his fist, well mounted, with his
spaniels after him, would needs know to what use all this preparation served; he made answer to kill certain fowls; the
patient demanded again, what his fowl might be worth which he killed in a year; he replied 5 or 10 crowns; and when he
urged him farther what his dogs, horse, and hawks stood him in, he told him 400 crowns; with that the patient bad be
gone, as he loved his life and welfare, for if our master come and find thee here, he will put thee in the pit amongst
mad men up to the chin: taxing the madness and folly of such vain men that spend themselves in those idle sports,
neglecting their business and necessary affairs. Leo Decimus, that hunting pope, is much discommended by 1877Jovius in
his life, for his immoderate desire of hawking and hunting, in so much that (as he saith) he would sometimes live about
Ostia weeks and months together, leave suitors 1878unrespected, bulls and pardons
unsigned, to his own prejudice, and many private men's loss. 1879“And if he had been by chance crossed in his sport, or his game not so good, he was so
impatient, that he would revile and miscall many times men of great worth with most bitter taunts, look so sour, be so
angry and waspish, so grieved and molested, that it is incredible to relate it.” But if he had good sport, and been
well pleased, on the other side, incredibili munificentia, with unspeakable bounty and
munificence he would reward all his fellow hunters, and deny nothing to any suitor when he was in that mood. To say
truth, 'tis the common humour of all gamesters, as Galataeus observes, if they win, no men living are so jovial and
merry, but 1880if they lose, though it be but a trifle, two or three games at tables, or a dealing at cards
for two pence a game, they are so choleric and testy that no man may speak with them, and break many times into violent
passions, oaths, imprecations, and unbeseeming speeches, little differing from mad men for the time. Generally of all
gamesters and gaming, if it be excessive, thus much we may conclude, that whether they win or lose for the present,
their winnings are not Munera fortunae, sed insidiae as that wise Seneca determines, not
fortune's gifts, but baits, the common catastrophe is 1881beggary, 1882Ut pestis vitam, sic adimit alea pecuniam, as the plague takes away
life, doth gaming goods, for 1883omnes nudi, inopes et egeni;

For a little pleasure they take, and some small gains and gettings now and then, their wives and children are ringed
in the meantime, and they themselves with loss of body and soul rue it in the end. I will say nothing of those
prodigious prodigals, perdendae pecuniae, genitos, as he 1885 taxed Anthony, Qui patrimonium sine ulla fori calumnia
amittunt, saith 1886Cyprian, and
1887mad sybaritical spendthrifts, Quique una comedunt patrimonia
coena; that eat up all at a breakfast, at a supper, or amongst bawds, parasites, and players, consume themselves
in an instant, as if they had flung it into 1888Tiber, with great wages, vain and idle expenses, &c., not themselves only, but even all
their friends, as a man desperately swimming drowns him that comes to help him, by suretyship and borrowing they will
willingly undo all their associates and allies. 1889Irati pecuniis, as he saith, angry with their money: 1890“what with a wanton eye, a liquorish tongue, and a gamesome hand,” when they have
indiscreetly impoverished themselves, mortgaged their wits, together with their lands, and entombed their ancestors'
fair possessions in their bowels, they may lead the rest of their days in prison, as many times they do; they repent at
leisure; and when all is gone begin to be thrifty: but Sera est in fundo parsimonia, 'tis then
too late to look about; their 1891end is misery, sorrow, shame, and discontent. And well they deserve to be infamous and
discontent. 1892Catamidiari in Amphitheatro, as by Adrian the emperor's edict they were of old, decoctores
bonorum suorum, so he calls them, prodigal fools, to be publicly shamed, and hissed out of all societies, rather
than to be pitied or relieved. 1893The Tuscans
and Boetians brought their bankrupts into the marketplace in a bier with an empty purse carried before them, all the
boys following, where they sat all day circumstante plebe, to be infamous and ridiculous. At
1894Padua in Italy they have a stone called the
stone of turpitude, near the senate-house, where spendthrifts, and such as disclaim non-payment of debts, do sit with
their hinder parts bare, that by that note of disgrace others may be terrified from all such vain expense, or borrowing
more than they can tell how to pay. The 1895civilians of old set guardians over such brain-sick prodigals, as they did over madmen, to
moderate their expenses, that they should not so loosely consume their fortunes, to the utter undoing of their
families.

I may not here omit those two main plagues, and common dotages of human kind, wine and women, which have infatuated
and besotted myriads of people; they go commonly together.

To whom is sorrow, saith Solomon, Pro. xxiii. 39, to whom is woe, but to such a one as
loves drink? it causeth torture, (vino tortus et ira) and bitterness of mind, Sirac. 31. 21.Vinum furoris, Jeremy calls it, 15.
cap. wine of madness, as well he may, for insanire facit sanos, it makes sound men sick
and sad, and wise men 1897mad, to say and do they know not what. Accidit hodie terribilis
casus (saith 1898S.
Austin) hear a miserable accident; Cyrillus' son this day in his drink, Matrem praegnantem nequiter
oppressit, sororem violare voluit, patrem occidit fere, et duas alias sorores ad mortem vulneravit, would have
violated his sister, killed his father, &c. A true saying it was of him, Vino dari laetitiam et
dolorem, drink causeth mirth, and drink causeth sorrow, drink causeth “poverty and want,” (Prov. xxi.) shame and disgrace. Multi ignobiles evasere ob vini potum, et
(Austin) amissis honoribus profugi aberrarunt: many men have made shipwreck of their fortunes,
and go like rogues and beggars, having turned all their substance into aurum potabile, that
otherwise might have lived in good worship and happy estate, and for a few hours' pleasure, for their Hilary term's but
short, or 1899free madness, as Seneca calls it, purchase unto themselves eternal tediousness and trouble.

That other madness is on women, Apostatare facit cor, saith the wise man, 1900Atque homini cerebrum minuit. Pleasant at
first she is, like Dioscorides Rhododaphne, that fair plant to the eye, but poison to the taste, the rest as bitter as
wormwood in the end (Prov. v. 4.) and sharp as a two-edged sword, (vii. 27.) “Her house is the way to hell, and goes down to the chambers of death.” What more sorrowful
can be said? they are miserable in this life, mad, beasts, led like 1901“oxen to the slaughter:” and that which is worse, whoremasters and drunkards shall be judged,
amittunt gratiam, saith Austin, perdunt gloriam, incurrunt damnationem
aeternam. They lose grace and glory;

Subsect. xiv.

Self-love, pride, and vainglory, 1903caecus amor sui, which Chrysostom calls one of the devil's three great nets; 1904“Bernard, an arrow which pierceth the soul through, and slays it; a sly, insensible enemy, not
perceived,” are main causes. Where neither anger, lust, covetousness, fear, sorrow, &c., nor any other perturbation
can lay hold; this will slyly and insensibly pervert us, Quem non gula vicit, Philautia,
superavit, (saith Cyprian) whom surfeiting could not overtake, self-love hath overcome. 1905“He hath scorned all money, bribes, gifts, upright otherwise and sincere, hath inserted
himself to no fond imagination, and sustained all those tyrannical concupiscences of the body, hath lost all his
honour, captivated by vainglory.” Chrysostom, sup. Io.Tu sola animum
mentemque peruris, gloria. A great assault and cause of our present malady, although we do most part neglect,
take no notice of it, yet this is a violent batterer of our souls, causeth melancholy and dotage. This pleasing humour;
this soft and whispering popular air, Amabilis insania; this delectable frenzy, most
irrefragable passion, Mentis gratissimus error, this acceptable disease, which so sweetly sets
upon us, ravisheth our senses, lulls our souls asleep, puffs up our hearts as so many bladders, and that without all
feeling, 1906insomuch as
“those that are misaffected with it, never so much as once perceive it, or think of any cure.” We commonly love him
best in this 1907malady,
that doth us most harm, and are very willing to be hurt; adulationibus nostris libentur facemus
(saith 1908 Jerome) we
love him, we love him for it: 1909O Bonciari suave, suave fuit a te tali haec tribui; 'Twas sweet to hear
it. And as 1910Pliny doth ingenuously confess to his dear friend Augurinus, “all thy writings are most
acceptable, but those especially that speak of us.” Again, a little after to Maximus, 1911“I cannot express how pleasing it
is to me to hear myself commended.” Though we smile to ourselves, at least ironically, when parasites bedaub us with
false encomiums, as many princes cannot choose but do, Quum tale quid nihil intra se
repererint, when they know they come as far short, as a mouse to an elephant, of any such virtues; yet it doth
us good. Though we seem many times to be angry, 1912 “and blush at our own praises, yet our souls inwardly rejoice, it puffs us up;” 'tis
fallax suavitas, blandus daemon, “makes us swell beyond our bounds, and forget ourselves.” Her
two daughters are lightness of mind, immoderate joy and pride, not excluding those other concomitant vices, which
1913Iodocus Lorichius reckons up; bragging,
hypocrisy, peevishness, and curiosity.

Now the common cause of this mischief, ariseth from ourselves or others, 1914we are active and passive. It proceeds
inwardly from ourselves, as we are active causes, from an overweening conceit we have of our good parts, own worth,
(which indeed is no worth) our bounty, favour, grace, valour, strength, wealth, patience, meekness, hospitality,
beauty, temperance, gentry, knowledge, wit, science, art, learning, our 1915 excellent gifts and fortunes,
for which, Narcissus-like, we admire, flatter, and applaud ourselves, and think all the world esteems so of us; and as
deformed women easily believe those that tell them they be fair, we are too credulous of our own good parts and
praises, too well persuaded of ourselves. We brag and venditate our 1916own works, and scorn all others in
respect of us; Inflati scientia, (saith Paul) our wisdom, 1917our learning, all our geese are swans, and we as basely esteem and vilify other men's, as
we do over-highly prize and value our own. We will not suffer them to be in secundis, no, not
in tertiis; what, Mecum confertur Ulysses? they are Mures, Muscae, culices prae se, nits and flies compared to his inexorable and supercilious, eminent and
arrogant worship: though indeed they be far before him. Only wise, only rich, only fortunate, valorous, and fair,
puffed up with this tympany of self-conceit; 1918as that proud Pharisee, they are not (as they suppose) “like other men,” of a purer and more
precious metal: 1919Soli rei gerendi sunt efficaces, which that wise Periander held of
such: 1920meditantur omne qui prius negotium, &c. Novi
quendam (saith 1921Erasmus) I knew one so arrogant that he thought himself inferior to no man living, like
1922Callisthenes the philosopher, that neither held Alexander's acts, or any other subject
worthy of his pen, such was his insolency; or Seleucus king of Syria, who thought none fit to contend with him but the
Romans. 1923Eos
solos dignos ratus quibuscum de imperio certaret. That which Tully writ to Atticus long since, is still in
force. 1924“There was never yet true poet nor orator, that thought any other better than himself.” And
such for the most part are your princes, potentates, great philosophers, historiographers, authors of sects or
heresies, and all our great scholars, as 1925Hierom defines; “a natural philosopher is a glorious creature, and a very slave of rumour,
fame, and popular opinion,” and though they write de contemptu gloriae, yet as he observes,
they will put their names to their books. Vobis et famae, me semper dedi, saith Trebellius
Pollio, I have wholly consecrated myself to you and fame. “'Tis all my desire, night and day, 'tis all my study to
raise my name.” Proud 1926Pliny seconds him; Quamquam O! &c. and that vainglorious
1927orator is not ashamed to confess in an Epistle
of his to Marcus Lecceius, Ardeo incredibili cupididate, &c. “I burn with an incredible
desire to have my 1928name registered in thy book.” Out of this fountain proceed all those cracks and brags —
1929speramus carmina fingi
Posse linenda cedro, et leni servanda cupresso — 1930Non usitata nec tenui ferar penna. — nec in terra morabor longius. Nil parvum
aut humili modo, nil mortale loquor. Dicar qua violens obstrepit Ausidus. — Exegi monumentum aere perennius. Iamque
opus exegi, quod nec Jovis ira, nec ignis, &c. cum venit ille dies, &c. parte tamen meliore mei super alta
perennis astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum. (This of Ovid I have paraphrased in English.)

And when I am dead and gone,

My corpse laid under a stone

My fame shall yet survive,

And I shall be alive,

In these my works for ever,

My glory shall persever, &c.

And that of Ennius,

Nemo me lachrymis decoret, neque funera fletu

Faxit, cur? volito docta per ora virum.

“Let none shed tears over me, or adorn my bier with sorrow — because I am eternally in the mouths of men.” With many
such proud strains, and foolish flashes too common with writers. Not so much as Democharis on the 1931 Topics, but he will be immortal. Typotius de
fama, shall be famous, and well he deserves, because he writ of fame; and every trivial poet must be renowned —
Plausuque petit clarescere vulgi. “He seeks the applause of the public.” This puffing humour it
is, that hath produced so many great tomes, built such famous monuments, strong castles, and Mausolean tombs, to have
their acts eternised — Digito monstrari, et dicier hic est; “to be pointed at with the finger,
and to have it said 'there he goes,'” to see their names inscribed, as Phryne on the walls of Thebes, Phryne fecit; this causeth so many bloody battles — Et noctes cogit vigilare
serenas; “and induces us to watch during calm nights.” Long journeys, Magnum iter intendo, sed
dat mihi gloria vires, “I contemplate a monstrous journey, but the love of glory strengthens me for it,” gaining
honour, a little applause, pride, self-love, vainglory. This is it which makes them take such pains, and break out into
those ridiculous strains, this high conceit of themselves, to 1932scorn all others; ridiculo fastu et intolerando contemptu; as 1933Palaemon the grammarian contemned Varro,
secum et natas et morituras literas jactans, and brings them to that height of insolency, that
they cannot endure to be contradicted, 1934“or hear of anything but their own commendation,” which Hierom notes of such kind of men. And
as 1935Austin well seconds him, “'tis their sole study day and night to be commended and applauded.”
When as indeed, in all wise men's judgments, quibus cor sapit, they are 1936mad, empty vessels, funges, beside themselves, derided, et ut Camelus in
proverbio quaerens cornua, etiam quas habebat aures amisit, 1937their works are toys, as an almanac out of date, 1938authoris pereunt garrulitate sui, they
seek fame and immortality, but reap dishonour and infamy, they are a common obloquy, insensati,
and come far short of that which they suppose or expect. 1939O puer ut sis vitalis metuo,

——— How much I dread

Thy days are short, some lord shall strike thee dead.

Of so many myriads of poets, rhetoricians, philosophers, sophisters, as 1940Eusebius well observes, which have written in former
ages, scarce one of a thousand's works remains, nomina et libri simul cum corporibus
interierunt, their books and bodies are perished together. It is not as they vainly think, they shall surely be
admired and immortal, as one told Philip of Macedon insultingly, after a victory, that his shadow was no longer than
before, we may say to them,

Nos demiramur, sed non cum deside vulgo,

Sed velut Harpyas, Gorgonas, et Furias.

We marvel too, not as the vulgar we,

But as we Gorgons, Harpies, or Furies see.

Or if we do applaud, honour and admire, quota pars, how small a part, in respect of the
whole world, never so much as hears our names, how few take notice of us, how slender a tract, as scant as Alcibiades'
land in a map! And yet every man must and will be immortal, as he hopes, and extend his fame to our antipodes, when as
half, no not a quarter of his own province or city, neither knows nor hears of him — but say they did, what's a city to
a kingdom, a kingdom to Europe, Europe to the world, the world itself that must have an end, if compared to the least
visible star in the firmament, eighteen times bigger than it? and then if those stars be infinite, and every star there
be a sun, as some will, and as this sun of ours hath his planets about him, all inhabited, what proportion bear we to
them, and where's our glory? Orbem terrarum victor Romanus habebat, as he cracked in Petronius,
all the world was under Augustus: and so in Constantine's time, Eusebius brags he governed all the world, universum mundum praeclare admodum administravit — et omnes orbis gentes Imperatori subjecti: so of
Alexander it is given out, the four monarchies, &c. when as neither Greeks nor Romans ever had the fifteenth part
of the now known world, nor half of that which was then described. What braggadocios are they and we then? quam brevis hic de nobis sermo, as 1941he said, 1942pudebit aucti nominis, how short a time, how little a while doth this fame of ours continue? Every private
province, every small territory and city, when we have all done, will yield as generous spirits, as brave examples in
all respects, as famous as ourselves, Cadwallader in Wales, Rollo in Normandy, Robin Hood and Little John, are as much
renowned in Sherwood, as Caesar in Rome, Alexander in Greece, or his Hephestion, 1943Omnis aetas omnisque populus in
exemplum et admirationem veniet, every town, city, book, is full of brave soldiers, senators, scholars; and
though 1944Bracyclas was a worthy captain,
a good man, and as they thought, not to be matched in Lacedaemon, yet as his mother truly said, plures
habet Sparta Bracyda meliores, Sparta had many better men than ever he was; and howsoever thou admirest thyself,
thy friend, many an obscure fellow the world never took notice of, had he been in place or action, would have done much
better than he or he, or thou thyself.

Another kind of mad men there is opposite to these, that are insensibly mad, and know not of it, such as contemn all
praise and glory, think themselves most free, when as indeed they are most mad: calcant sed alio
fastu: a company of cynics, such as are monks, hermits, anchorites, that contemn the world, contemn themselves,
contemn all titles, honours, offices: and yet in that contempt are more proud than any man living whatsoever. They are
proud in humility, proud in that they are not proud, saepe homo de vanae gloriae contemptu, vanius
gloriatur, as Austin hath it, confess. lib. 10, cap. 38, like Diogenes, intus gloriantur, they brag inwardly, and feed themselves fat with a self-conceit of sanctity, which is no
better than hypocrisy. They go in sheep's russet, many great men that might maintain themselves in cloth of gold, and
seem to be dejected, humble by their outward carriage, when as inwardly they are swollen full of pride, arrogancy, and
self-conceit. And therefore Seneca adviseth his friend Lucilius, 1945“in his attire and gesture, outward actions, especially to avoid all such things as are
more notable in themselves: as a rugged attire, hirsute head, horrid beard, contempt of money, coarse lodging, and
whatsoever leads to fame that opposite way.”

All this madness yet proceeds from ourselves, the main engine which batters us is from others, we are merely passive
in this business: from a company of parasites and flatterers, that with immoderate praise, and bombast epithets,
glossing titles, false eulogiums, so bedaub and applaud, gild over many a silly and undeserving man, that they clap him
quite out of his wits. Res imprimis violenta est, as Hierom notes, this common applause is a
most violent thing, laudum placenta, a drum, fife, and trumpet cannot so animate; that fattens
men, erects and dejects them in an instant. 1946Palma negata macrum, donata reducit opimum. It makes them fat and lean, as frost doth conies.
1947“And who is that mortal man that can so contain himself, that if he be immoderately
commended and applauded, will not be moved?” Let him be what he will, those parasites will overturn him: if he be a
king, he is one of the nine worthies, more than a man, a god forthwith — 1948edictum Domini Deique nostri: and they will sacrifice unto him,

If he be a soldier, then Themistocles, Epaminondas, Hector, Achilles, duo fulmina belli, triumviri
terrarum, &c., and the valour of both Scipios is too little for him, he is invictissimus,
serenissimus, multis trophaeus ornatissimus, naturae, dominus, although he be lepus
galeatus, indeed a very coward, a milk-sop, 1950and as he said of Xerxes, postremus in pugna, primus in fuga, and such
a one as never durst look his enemy in the face. If he be a big man, then is he a Samson, another Hercules; if he
pronounce a speech, another Tully or Demosthenes; as of Herod in the Acts, “the voice of God and not of man:” if he can
make a verse, Homer, Virgil, &c., And then my silly weak patient takes all these eulogiums to himself; if he be a
scholar so commended for his much reading, excellent style, method, &c., he will eviscerate himself like a spider,
study to death, Laudatas ostendit avis Junonia pennas, peacock-like he will display all his
feathers. If he be a soldier, and so applauded, his valour extolled, though it be impar
congressus, as that of Troilus and Achilles, Infelix puer, he will combat with a giant,
run first upon a breach, as another 1951Philippus, he will ride into the thickest of his enemies. Commend his housekeeping, and
he will beggar himself; commend his temperance, he will starve himself.

he is mad, mad, mad, no woe with him:— impatiens consortis erit, he will over the 1953Alps to be talked of, or to maintain his credit. Commend an ambitious man, some proud
prince or potentate, si plus aequo laudetur (saith 1954Erasmus) cristas erigit, exuit hominem, Deum se
putat, he sets up his crest, and will be no longer a man but a God.

How did this work with Alexander, that would needs be Jupiter's son, and go like Hercules in a lion's skin? Domitian
a god, 1957(Dominus Deus noster sic fieri jubet,) like the 1958Persian kings, whose image was adored by all that came into the city of Babylon. Commodus the
emperor was so gulled by his flattering parasites, that he must be called Hercules. 1959Antonius the Roman would be crowned with ivy, carried in a chariot, and adored for
Bacchus. Cotys, king of Thrace, was married to 1960 Minerva, and sent three several messengers one after another, to see if she were come to
his bedchamber. Such a one was 1961Jupiter
Menecrates, Maximinus, Jovianus, Dioclesianus Herculeus, Sapor the Persian king, brother of the sun and moon, and our
modern Turks, that will be gods on earth, kings of kings, God's shadow, commanders of all that may be commanded, our
kings of China and Tartary in this present age. Such a one was Xerxes, that would whip the sea, fetter Neptune,
stulta jactantia, and send a challenge to Mount Athos; and such are many sottish princes,
brought into a fool's paradise by their parasites, 'tis a common humour, incident to all men, when they are in great
places, or come to the solstice of honour, have done, or deserved well, to applaud and flatter themselves. Stultitiam suam produnt, &c., (saith 1962Platerus) your very tradesmen if they be excellent, will crack and brag, and show their folly
in excess. They have good parts, and they know it, you need not tell them of it; out of a conceit of their worth, they
go smiling to themselves, a perpetual meditation of their trophies and plaudits, they run at last quite mad, and lose
their wits.1963Petrarch, lib. 1 de contemptu mundi, confessed as much of
himself, and Cardan, in his fifth book of wisdom, gives an instance in a smith of Milan, a fellow-citizen of his,
1964one Galeus de Rubeis, that being commended for refining of an instrument of Archimedes,
for joy ran mad. Plutarch in the life of Artaxerxes, hath such a like story of one Chamus, a soldier, that wounded king
Cyrus in battle, and “grew thereupon so 1965arrogant, that in a
short space after he lost his wits.” So many men, if any new honour, office, preferment, booty, treasure, possession,
or patrimony, ex insperato fall unto them for immoderate joy, and continual meditation of it,
cannot sleep 1966or tell what they say or do, they are so ravished on a sudden; and with vain conceits
transported, there is no rule with them. Epaminondas, therefore, the next day after his Leuctrian victory, 1967“came abroad all squalid and submiss,” and gave no other reason to his friends of so doing,
than that he perceived himself the day before, by reason of his good fortune, to be too insolent, overmuch joyed. That
wise and virtuous lady, 1968Queen Katherine,
Dowager of England, in private talk, upon like occasion, said, that 1969“she would not willingly endure the extremity of either fortune; but if it were so, that
of necessity she must undergo the one, she would be in adversity, because comfort was never wanting in it, but still
counsel and government were defective in the other:” they could not moderate themselves.

Subsect. xv.

Love of Learning, or overmuch study. With a Digression of the misery of Scholars, and why the Muses
are Melancholy.

Leonartus Fuchsius Instit. lib. iii. sect. 1. cap. 1. Felix Plater, lib. iii. de mentis alienat. Herc. de Saxonia, Tract. post. de melanch. cap. 3,
speak of a 1970peculiar
fury, which comes by overmuch study. Fernelius, lib. 1, cap. 18, 1971puts study,
contemplation, and continual meditation, as an especial cause of madness: and in his 86
consul. cites the same words. Jo. Arculanus, in lib. 9, Rhasis ad Alnansorem, cap. 16,
amongst other causes reckons up studium vehemens: so doth Levinus Lemnius, lib. de occul. nat. mirac. lib. 1, cap. 16.1972“Many men” (saith he) “come to this malady by continual 1973study, and night-waking, and of all other men, scholars are most subject to it:” and such
Rhasis adds, 1974“that have commonly the finest wits.” Cont. lib. 1, tract. 9,
Marsilius Ficinus, de sanit. tuenda, lib. 1. cap. 7, puts melancholy amongst one of those
five principal plagues of students, 'tis a common Maul unto them all, and almost in some measure an inseparable
companion. Varro belike for that cause calls Tristes Philosophos et severos, severe, sad, dry,
tetric, are common epithets to scholars: and 1975Patritius therefore, in the institution of princes, would not have them to be great
students. For (as Machiavel holds) study weakens their bodies, dulls the spirits, abates their strength and courage;
and good scholars are never good soldiers, which a certain Goth well perceived, for when his countrymen came into
Greece, and would have burned all their books, he cried out against it, by no means they should do it, 1976 “leave them that plague, which in time will consume all their vigour, and martial
spirits.” The 1977Turks abdicated Cornutus
the next heir from the empire, because he was so much given to his book: and 'tis the common tenet of the world, that
learning dulls and diminisheth the spirits, and so per consequens produceth melancholy.

Two main reasons may be given of it, why students should be more subject to this malady than others. The one is,
they live a sedentary, solitary life, sibi et musis, free from bodily exercise, and those
ordinary disports which other men use: and many times if discontent and idleness concur with it, which is too frequent,
they are precipitated into this gulf on a sudden: but the common cause is overmuch study; too much learning (as
1978Festus told Paul) hath made thee mad;
'tis that other extreme which effects it. So did Trincavelius, lib. 1, consil. 12 and 13,
find by his experience, in two of his patients, a young baron, and another that contracted this malady by too vehement
study. So Forestus, observat. l. 10, observ. 13, in a young divine in Louvain, that was mad,
and said 1979“he had a Bible in his head:” Marsilius Ficinus de sanit. tuend. lib.
1, cap. 1, 3, 4, and lib. 2, cap. 16, gives many reasons, 1980 “why students dote more often than others.” The first is their negligence; 1981“other men look to their tools, a painter will wash his pencils, a smith will look to his
hammer, anvil, forge; a husbandman will mend his plough-irons, and grind his hatchet if it be dull; a falconer or
huntsman will have an especial care of his hawks, hounds, horses, dogs, &c.; a musician will string and unstring
his lute, &c.; only scholars neglect that instrument, their brain and spirits (I mean) which they daily use, and by
which they range overall the world, which by much study is consumed.” Vide (saith Lucian)
ne funiculum nimis intendendo aliquando abrumpas: “See thou twist not the rope so hard, till at
length it 1982break.” Facinus in his fourth chap. gives some other reasons; Saturn and Mercury, the patrons
of learning, they are both dry planets: and Origanus assigns the same cause, why Mercurialists are so poor, and most
part beggars; for that their president Mercury had no better fortune himself. The destinies of old put poverty upon him
as a punishment; since when, poetry and beggary are Gemelli, twin-born brats, inseparable companions;

Mercury can help them to knowledge, but not to money. The second is contemplation, 1984“which dries the brain and extinguisheth natural heat; for whilst the spirits are intent
to meditation above in the head, the stomach and liver are left destitute, and thence come black blood and crudities by
defect of concoction, and for want of exercise the superfluous vapours cannot exhale,” &c. The same reasons are
repeated by Gomesius, lib. 4, cap. 1, de sale1985Nymannus orat. de Imag. Jo. Voschius, lib. 2, cap. 5, de peste: and something more they
add, that hard students are commonly troubled with gouts, catarrhs, rheums, cachexia, bradiopepsia, bad eyes, stone and
colic, 1986crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and all such diseases as come by
overmuch sitting; they are most part lean, dry, ill-coloured, spend their fortunes, lose their wits, and many times
their lives, and all through immoderate pains, and extraordinary studies. If you will not believe the truth of this,
look upon great Tostatus and Thomas Aquinas's works, and tell me whether those men took pains? peruse Austin, Hierom,
&c., and many thousands besides.

Qui cupit optatam cursu contingere metam,

Multa tulit, fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit.

He that desires this wished goal to gain,

Must sweat and freeze before he can attain,

and labour hard for it. So did Seneca, by his own confession, ep. 8.1987“Not a day that I spend idle, part of the night I keep mine eyes open, tired with waking,
and now slumbering to their continual task.” Hear Tully pro Archia Poeta: “whilst others
loitered, and took their pleasures, he was continually at his book,” so they do that will be scholars, and that to the
hazard (I say) of their healths, fortunes, wits, and lives. How much did Aristotle and Ptolemy spend? unius regni precium they say, more than a king's ransom; how many crowns per annum, to perfect arts, the
one about his History of Creatures, the other on his Almagest? How much time did Thebet Benchorat employ, to find out
the motion of the eighth sphere? forty years and more, some write: how many poor scholars have lost their wits, or
become dizzards, neglecting all worldly affairs and their own health, wealth, esse and
bene esse, to gain knowledge for which, after all their pains, in this world's esteem they are
accounted ridiculous and silly fools, idiots, asses, and (as oft they are) rejected, contemned, derided, doting, and
mad. Look for examples in Hildesheim spicel. 2, de mania et delirio: read Trincavellius,
l. 3. consil. 36, et c. 17. Montanus, consil. 233.1988Garceus de Judic. genit. cap. 33. Mercurialis, consil. 86, cap. 25. Prosper 1989Calenius in his Book de atra bile; Go to Bedlam and ask. Or if they
keep their wits, yet they are esteemed scrubs and fools by reason of their carriage: “after seven years' study”

——— statua, taciturnius exit,

Plerumque et risum populi quatit. ———

“He becomes more silent than a statue, and generally excites people's laughter.” Because they cannot ride a horse,
which every clown can do; salute and court a gentlewoman, carve at table, cringe and make conges, which every common
swasher can do, 1990hos populus ridet, &c., they are laughed to scorn, and
accounted silly fools by our gallants. Yea, many times, such is their misery, they deserve it: 1991a mere scholar, a mere ass.

Thus they go commonly meditating unto themselves, thus they sit, such is their action and gesture. Fulgosus,
l. 8, c. 7, makes mention how Th. Aquinas supping with king Lewis of France, upon a sudden
knocked his fist upon the table, and cried, conclusum est contra Manichaeos, his wits were a
wool-gathering, as they say, and his head busied about other matters, when he perceived his error, he was much 1994abashed.
Such a story there is of Archimedes in Vitruvius, that having found out the means to know how much gold was mingled
with the silver in king Hieron's crown, ran naked forth of the bath and cried ἕυρηκα, I have
found: 1995“and was commonly so intent to his studies, that he never perceived what was done about
him: when the city was taken, and the soldiers now ready to rifle his house, he took no notice of it.” St. Bernard rode
all day long by the Lemnian lake, and asked at last where he was, Marullus, lib. 2, cap. 4.
It was Democritus's carriage alone that made the Abderites suppose him to have been mad, and send for Hippocrates to
cure him: if he had been in any solemn company, he would upon all occasions fall a laughing. Theophrastus saith as much
of Heraclitus, for that he continually wept, and Laertius of Menedemus Lampsacus, because he ran like a madman,
1996saying, “he came from hell as a spy, to tell the devils what mortal men did.” Your
greatest students are commonly no better, silly, soft fellows in their outward behaviour, absurd, ridiculous to others,
and no whit experienced in worldly business; they can measure the heavens, range over the world, teach others wisdom,
and yet in bargains and contracts they are circumvented by every base tradesman. Are not these men fools? and how
should they be otherwise, “but as so many sots in schools, when” (as 1997he well observed) “they neither hear nor see such things as are commonly practised
abroad?” how should they get experience, by what means? 1998“I knew in my time many scholars,” saith Aeneas Sylvius (in an epistle of his to Gasper
Scitick, chancellor to the emperor), “excellent well learned, but so rude, so silly, that they had no common civility,
nor knew how to manage their domestic or public affairs.” “Paglarensis was amazed, and said his farmer had surely
cozened him, when he heard him tell that his sow had eleven pigs, and his ass had but one foal.” To say the best of
this profession, I can give no other testimony of them in general, than that of Pliny of Isaeus; 1999“He is yet a scholar, than which kind of men there is nothing so simple, so sincere, none
better, they are most part harmless, honest, upright, innocent, plain-dealing men.”

Now because they are commonly subject to such hazards and inconveniences as dotage, madness, simplicity, &c. Jo.
Voschius would have good scholars to be highly rewarded, and had in some extraordinary respect above other men, “to
have greater 2000privileges than the rest, that adventure themselves and abbreviate their lives for the public
good.” But our patrons of learning are so far nowadays from respecting the muses, and giving that honour to scholars,
or reward which they deserve, and are allowed by those indulgent privileges of many noble princes, that after all their
pains taken in the universities, cost and charge, expenses, irksome hours, laborious tasks, wearisome days, dangers,
hazards, (barred interim from all pleasures which other men have, mewed up like hawks all their lives) if they chance
to wade through them, they shall in the end be rejected, contemned, and which is their greatest misery, driven to their
shifts, exposed to want, poverty, and beggary. Their familiar attendants are,

If there were nothing else to trouble them, the conceit of this alone were enough to make them all melancholy. Most
other trades and professions, after some seven years' apprenticeship, are enabled by their craft to live of themselves.
A merchant adventures his goods at sea, and though his hazard be great, yet if one ship return of four, he likely makes
a saving voyage. An husbandman's gains are almost certain; quibus ipse Jupiter nocere non
potest (whom Jove himself can't harm) ('tis 2002Cato's hyperbole, a
great husband himself); only scholars methinks are most uncertain, unrespected, subject to all casualties, and hazards.
For first, not one of a many proves to be a scholar, all are not capable and docile, 2003ex omniligno non fit Mercurius: we can make majors and officers every
year, but not scholars: kings can invest knights and barons, as Sigismund the emperor confessed; universities can give
degrees; and Tu quod es, e populo quilibet esse potest; but he nor they, nor all the world, can
give learning, make philosophers, artists, orators, poets; we can soon say, as Seneca well notes, O
virum bonum, o divitem, point at a rich man, a good, a happy man, a prosperous man, sumptuose
vestitum, Calamistratum, bene olentem, magno temporis impendio constat haec laudatio, o virum literarum, but
'tis not so easily performed to find out a learned man. Learning is not so quickly got, though they may be willing to
take pains, to that end sufficiently informed, and liberally maintained by their patrons and parents, yet few can
compass it. Or if they be docile, yet all men's wills are not answerable to their wits, they can apprehend, but will
not take pains; they are either seduced by bad companions, vel in puellam impingunt, vel in
poculum (they fall in with women or wine) and so spend their time to their friends' grief and their own
undoings. Or put case they be studious, industrious, of ripe wits, and perhaps good capacities, then how many diseases
of body and mind must they encounter? No labour in the world like unto study. It may be, their temperature will not
endure it, but striving to be excellent to know all, they lose health, wealth, wit, life and all. Let him yet happily
escape all these hazards, aereis intestinis with a body of brass, and is now consummate and
ripe, he hath profited in his studies, and proceeded with all applause: after many expenses, he is fit for preferment,
where shall he have it? he is as far to seek it as he was (after twenty years' standing) at the first day of his coming
to the University. For what course shall he take, being now capable and ready? The most parable and easy, and about
which many are employed, is to teach a school, turn lecturer or curate, and for that he shall have falconer's wages,
ten pound per annum, and his diet, or some small stipend, so long as he can please his patron or the parish; if they
approve him not (for usually they do but a year or two) as inconstant, as 2004they that cried “Hosanna” one day, and “Crucify him” the other; serving-man-like, he must
go look a new master; if they do, what is his reward?

Like an ass, he wears out his time for provender, and can show a stump rod, togam tritam et
laceram saith 2006Haedus, an
old torn gown, an ensign of his infelicity, he hath his labour for his pain, a modicum to keep him till he be decrepit,
and that is all. Grammaticus non est felix, &c. If he be a trencher chaplain in a
gentleman's house, as it befell 2007 Euphormio,
after some seven years' service, he may perchance have a living to the halves, or some small rectory with the mother of
the maids at length, a poor kinswoman, or a cracked chambermaid, to have and to hold during the time of his life. But
if he offend his good patron, or displease his lady mistress in the mean time,

as Hercules did by Cacus, he shall be dragged forth of doors by the heels, away with him. If he bend his forces to
some other studies, with an intent to be a secretis to some nobleman, or in such a place with
an ambassador, he shall find that these persons rise like apprentices one under another, and in so many tradesmen's
shops, when the master is dead, the foreman of the shop commonly steps in his place. Now for poets, rhetoricians,
historians, philosophers, 2009mathematicians, sophisters, &c.; they are like grasshoppers, sing they must in summer, and
pine in the winter, for there is no preferment for them. Even so they were at first, if you will believe that pleasant
tale of Socrates, which he told fair Phaedrus under a plane-tree, at the banks of the river Iseus; about noon when it
was hot, and the grasshoppers made a noise, he took that sweet occasion to tell him a tale, how grasshoppers were once
scholars, musicians, poets, &c., before the Muses were born, and lived without meat and drink, and for that cause
were turned by Jupiter into grasshoppers. And may be turned again, In Tythoni Cicadas, aut Lyciorum
ranas, for any reward I see they are like to have: or else in the mean time, I would they could live, as they
did, without any viaticum, like so many 2010manucodiatae, those Indian birds of paradise, as we commonly call them, those I mean that
live with the air and dew of heaven, and need no other food; for being as they are, their 2011“rhetoric only
serves them to curse their bad fortunes,” and many of them for want of means are driven to hard shifts; from
grasshoppers they turn humble-bees and wasps, plain parasites, and make the muses, mules, to satisfy their
hunger-starved paunches, and get a meal's meat. To say truth, 'tis the common fortune of most scholars, to be servile
and poor, to complain pitifully, and lay open their wants to their respectless patrons, as 2012Cardan doth, as 2013Xilander and many others: and which is too common in
those dedicatory epistles, for hope of gain, to lie, flatter, and with hyperbolical eulogiums and commendations, to
magnify and extol an illiterate unworthy idiot, for his excellent virtues, whom they should rather, as 2014Machiavel observes, vilify, and rail at downright for his most notorious villainies and
vices. So they prostitute themselves as fiddlers, or mercenary tradesmen, to serve great men's turns for a small
reward. They are like 2015Indians,
they have store of gold, but know not the worth of it: for I am of Synesius's opinion, 2016“King Hieron got more by Simonides' acquaintance, than Simonides did by his;” they have their
best education, good institution, sole qualification from us, and when they have done well, their honour and
immortality from us: we are the living tombs, registers, and as so many trumpeters of their fames: what was Achilles
without Homer? Alexander without Arian and Curtius? who had known the Caesars, but for Suetonius and Dion?

they are more beholden to scholars, than scholars to them; but they undervalue themselves, and so by those great men
are kept down. Let them have that encyclopaedian, all the learning in the world; they must keep it to themselves,
2018“live in base esteem, and starve, except they will submit,” as Budaeus well hath it, “so
many good parts, so many ensigns of arts, virtues, be slavishly obnoxious to some illiterate potentate, and live under
his insolent worship, or honour, like parasites,” Qui tanquam mures alienum panem comedunt. For
to say truth, artes hae, non sunt Lucrativae, as Guido Bonat that great astrologer could
foresee, they be not gainful arts these, sed esurientes et famelicae, but poor and hungry.

Poverty is the muses' patrimony, and as that poetical divinity teacheth us, when Jupiter's daughters were each of
them married to the gods, the muses alone were left solitary, Helicon forsaken of all suitors, and I believe it was,
because they had no portion.

Calliope longum caelebs cur vixit in aevum?

Nempe nihil dotis, quod numeraret, erat.

Why did Calliope live so long a maid?

Because she had no dowry to be paid.

Ever since all their followers are poor, forsaken and left unto themselves. Insomuch, that as 2020Petronius argues, you shall likely know them by their clothes. “There came,” saith he,
“by chance into my company, a fellow not very spruce to look on, that I could perceive by that note alone he was a
scholar, whom commonly rich men hate: I asked him what he was, he answered, a poet: I demanded again why he was so
ragged, he told me this kind of learning never made any man rich.”

All which our ordinary students, right well perceiving in the universities, how unprofitable these poetical,
mathematical, and philosophical studies are, how little respected, how few patrons; apply themselves in all haste to
those three commodious professions of law, physic, and divinity, sharing themselves between them, 2022rejecting these arts in the mean time, history, philosophy, philology, or lightly passing
them over, as pleasant toys fitting only table-talk, and to furnish them with discourse. They are not so behoveful: he
that can tell his money hath arithmetic enough: he is a true geometrician, can measure out a good fortune to himself; a
perfect astrologer, that can cast the rise and fall of others, and mark their errant motions to his own use. The best
optics are, to reflect the beams of some great man's favour and grace to shine upon him. He is a good engineer that
alone can make an instrument to get preferment. This was the common tenet and practice of Poland, as Cromerus observed
not long since, in the first book of his history; their universities were generally base, not a philosopher, a
mathematician, an antiquary, &c., to be found of any note amongst them, because they had no set reward or stipend,
but every man betook himself to divinity, hoc solum in votis habens, opimum sacerdotium, a good
parsonage was their aim. This was the practice of some of our near neighbours, as 2023Lipsius inveighs, “they thrust their children to
the study of law and divinity, before they be informed aright, or capable of such studies.” Scilicet
omnibus artibus antistat spes lucri, et formosior est cumulus auri, quam quicquid Graeci Latinique delirantes
scripserunt. Ex hoc numero deinde veniunt ad gubernacula reipub. intersunt et praesunt consiliis regum, o pater, o
patria? so he complained, and so may others. For even so we find, to serve a great man, to get an office in some
bishop's court (to practise in some good town) or compass a benefice, is the mark we shoot at, as being so
advantageous, the highway to preferment.

Although many times, for aught I can see, these men fail as often as the rest in their projects, and are as usually
frustrate of their hopes. For let him be a doctor of the law, an excellent civilian of good worth, where shall he
practise and expatiate? Their fields are so scant, the civil law with us so contracted with prohibitions, so few
causes, by reason of those all-devouring municipal laws, quibus nihil illiteratius, saith
2024 Erasmus, an illiterate and a
barbarous study, (for though they be never so well learned in it, I can hardly vouchsafe them the name of scholars,
except they be otherwise qualified) and so few courts are left to that profession, such slender offices, and those
commonly to be compassed at such dear rates, that I know not how an ingenious man should thrive amongst them. Now for
physicians, there are in every village so many mountebanks, empirics, quacksalvers, Paracelsians, as they call
themselves, Caucifici et sanicidae so 2025Clenard terms them, wizards, alchemists, poor vicars, cast apothecaries, physicians' men,
barbers, and good wives, professing great skill, that I make great doubt how they shall be maintained, or who shall be
their patients. Besides, there are so many of both sorts, and some of them such harpies, so covetous, so clamorous, so
impudent; and as 2026he
said, litigious idiots,

Quibus loquacis affatim arrogantiae est

Pentiae parum aut nihil,

Nec ulla mica literarii salis,

Crumenimulga natio:

Loquuteleia turba, litium strophae,

Maligna litigantium cohors, togati vultures,

Lavernae alumni, Agyrtae, &c.

Which have no skill but prating arrogance,

No learning, such a purse-milking nation:

Gown'd vultures, thieves, and a litigious rout

Of cozeners, that haunt this occupation,

that they cannot well tell how to live one by another, but as he jested in the Comedy of Clocks, they were so many,
2027major pars populi arida reptant
fame, they are almost starved a great part of them, and ready to devour their fellows, 2028Et noxia callidilate se corripere,
such a multitude of pettifoggers and empirics, such impostors, that an honest man knows not in what sort to compose and
behave himself in their society, to carry himself with credit in so vile a rout, scientiae nomen, tot
sumptibus partum et vigiliis, profiteri dispudeat, postquam, &c.

Last of all to come to our divines, the most noble profession and worthy of double honour, but of all others the
most distressed and miserable. If you will not believe me, hear a brief of it, as it was not many years since publicly
preached at Paul's cross, 2029by a
grave minister then, and now a reverend bishop of this land: “We that are bred up in learning, and destinated by our
parents to this end, we suffer our childhood in the grammar-school, which Austin calls magnam
tyrannidem, et grave malum, and compares it to the torments of martyrdom; when we come to the university, if we
live of the college allowance, as Phalaris objected to the Leontines, παν τῶν ἐνδεῖς πλὴν λιμοὺ καὶ
φόβου, needy of all things but hunger and fear, or if we be maintained but partly by our parents' cost, do
expend in unnecessary maintenance, books and degrees, before we come to any perfection, five hundred pounds, or a
thousand marks. If by this price of the expense of time, our bodies and spirits, our substance and patrimonies, we
cannot purchase those small rewards, which are ours by law, and the right of inheritance, a poor parsonage, or a
vicarage of 50l. per annum, but we must pay to the patron for the lease of a life (a spent and out-worn life)
either in annual pension, or above the rate of a copyhold, and that with the hazard and loss of our souls, by simony
and perjury, and the forfeiture of all our spiritual preferments, in esse and posse, both present and to come. What father after a while will be so improvident to bring up his son to
his great charge, to this necessary beggary? What Christian will be so irreligious, to bring up his son in that course
of life, which by all probability and necessity, cogit ad turpia, enforcing to sin, will
entangle him in simony and perjury, when as the poet said, Invitatus ad haec aliquis de ponte
negabit: a beggar's brat taken from the bridge where he sits a begging, if he knew the inconvenience, had cause
to refuse it.” This being thus, have not we fished fair all this while, that are initiate divines, to find no better
fruits of our labours, 2030hoc est cur palles, cur quis non prandeat hoc est? do we macerate ourselves for this? Is it for this we
rise so early all the year long? 2031“Leaping” (as he saith) “out of our beds, when we hear the bell ring, as if we had heard a
thunderclap.” If this be all the respect, reward and honour we shall have, 2032frange leves calamos, et scinde Thalia libellos: let us give over our
books, and betake ourselves to some other course of life; to what end should we study? 2033Quid me litterulas stulti docuere parentes, what
did our parents mean to make us scholars, to be as far to seek of preferment after twenty years' study, as we were at
first: why do we take such pains? Quid tantum insanis juvat impallescere chartis? If there be
no more hope of reward, no better encouragement, I say again, Frange leves calamos, et scinde Thalia
libellos; let's turn soldiers, sell our books, and buy swords, guns, and pikes, or stop bottles with them, turn
our philosopher's gowns, as Cleanthes once did, into millers' coats, leave all and rather betake ourselves to any other
course of life, than to continue longer in this misery. 2034Praestat dentiscalpia radere, quam literariis monumentis magnatum favorem
emendicare.

Yea, but methinks I hear some man except at these words, that though this be true which I have said of the estate of
scholars, and especially of divines, that it is miserable and distressed at this time, that the church suffers
shipwreck of her goods, and that they have just cause to complain; there is a fault, but whence proceeds it? If the
cause were justly examined, it would be retorted upon ourselves, if we were cited at that tribunal of truth, we should
be found guilty, and not able to excuse it That there is a fault among us, I confess, and were there not a buyer, there
would not be a seller; but to him that will consider better of it, it will more than manifestly appear, that the
fountain of these miseries proceeds from these griping patrons. In accusing them, I do not altogether excuse us; both
are faulty, they and we: yet in my judgment, theirs is the greater fault, more apparent causes and much to be
condemned. For my part, if it be not with me as I would, or as it should, I do ascribe the cause, as 2035Cardan did in the like case; meo
infortunio potius quam illorum sceleri, to 2036mine own infelicity rather than their naughtiness: although I have been baffled in my
time by some of them, and have as just cause to complain as another: or rather indeed to mine own negligence; for I was
ever like that Alexander in 2037Plutarch, Crassus his tutor in philosophy, who, though he lived many years familiarly with rich
Crassus, was even as poor when from, (which many wondered at) as when he came first to him; he never asked, the other
never gave him anything; when he travelled with Crassus he borrowed a hat of him, at his return restored it again. I
have had some such noble friends' acquaintance and scholars, but most part (common courtesies and ordinary respects
excepted) they and I parted as we met, they gave me as much as I requested, and that was — And as Alexander ab
Alexandro Genial. dier. l. 6. c. 16. made answer to Hieronymus Massainus, that wondered,
quum plures ignavos et ignobiles ad dignitates et sacerdotia promotos quotidie videret, when
other men rose, still he was in the same state, eodem tenore et fortuna cui mercedem laborum
studiorumque deberi putaret, whom he thought to deserve as well as the rest. He made answer, that he was content
with his present estate, was not ambitious, and although objurgabundus suam segnitiem accusaret, cum
obscurae sortis homines ad sacerdotia et pontificatus evectos, &c., he chid him for his backwardness, yet he
was still the same: and for my part (though I be not worthy perhaps to carry Alexander's books) yet by some overweening
and well-wishing friends, the like speeches have been used to me; but I replied still with Alexander, that I had
enough, and more peradventure than I deserved; and with Libanius Sophista, that rather chose (when honours and offices
by the emperor were offered unto him) to be talis Sophista, quam tails Magistratus. I had as
lief be still Democritus junior, and privus privatus, si mihi jam daretur optio, quam talis fortasse
Doctor, talis Dominus. — Sed quorsum haec? For the rest 'tis on both sides facinus
detestandum, to buy and sell livings, to detain from the church, that which God's and men's laws have bestowed
on it; but in them most, and that from the covetousness and ignorance of such as are interested in this business; I
name covetousness in the first place, as the root of all these mischiefs, which, Achan-like, compels them to commit
sacrilege, and to make simoniacal compacts, (and what not) to their own ends, 2038that kindles God's wrath, brings a plague, vengeance, and a heavy visitation upon
themselves and others. Some out of that insatiable desire of filthy lucre, to be enriched, care not how they come by it
per fas et nefas, hook or crook, so they have it. And others when they have with riot and
prodigality embezzled their estates, to recover themselves, make a prey of the church, robbing it, as 2039Julian the apostate did, spoil parsons of their
revenues (in keeping half back, 2040as a great man amongst us observes:) “and that maintenance on which they should live:” by means
whereof, barbarism is increased, and a great decay of Christian professors: for who will apply himself to these divine
studies, his son, or friend, when after great pains taken, they shall have nothing whereupon to live? But with what
event do they these things?

They toil and moil, but what reap they? They are commonly unfortunate families that use it, accursed in their
progeny, and, as common experience evinceth, accursed themselves in all their proceedings. “With what face” (as
2042he quotes
out of Aust.) “can they expect a blessing or inheritance from Christ in heaven, that defraud Christ of his inheritance
here on earth?” I would all our simoniacal patrons, and such as detain tithes, would read those judicious tracts of Sir
Henry Spelman, and Sir James Sempill, knights; those late elaborate and learned treatises of Dr. Tilslye, and Mr.
Montague, which they have written of that subject. But though they should read, it would be to small purpose,
clames licet et mare coelo Confundas; thunder, lighten, preach hell and damnation, tell them
'tis a sin, they will not believe it; denounce and terrify, they have 2043cauterised consciences, they do not attend, as the enchanted adder, they stop their ears. Call
them base, irreligious, profane, barbarous, pagans, atheists, epicures, (as some of them surely are) with the bawd in
Plautus, Euge, optime, they cry and applaud themselves with that miser, 2044simul ac nummos contemplor in arca: say what
you will, quocunque modo rem: as a dog barks at the moon, to no purpose are your sayings: Take
your heaven, let them have money. A base, profane, epicurean, hypocritical rout: for my part, let them pretend what
zeal they will, counterfeit religion, blear the world's eyes, bombast themselves, and stuff out their greatness with
church spoils, shine like so many peacocks; so cold is my charity, so defective in this behalf, that I shall never
think better of them, than that they are rotten at core, their bones are full of epicurean hypocrisy, and atheistical
marrow, they are worse than heathens. For as Dionysius Halicarnassaeus observes, Antiq. Rom. lib.
7.2045Primum locum, &c. “Greeks and Barbarians observe all
religious rites, and dare not break them for fear of offending their gods;” but our simoniacal contractors, our
senseless Achans, our stupefied patrons, fear neither God nor devil, they have evasions for it, it is no sin, or not
due jure divino, or if a sin, no great sin, &c. And though they be daily punished for it,
and they do manifestly perceive, that as he said, frost and fraud come to foul ends; yet as 2046Chrysostom follows it
Nulla ex poena sit correctio, et quasi adversis malitia hominum provocetur, crescit quotidie quod
puniatur: they are rather worse than better — iram atque animos a crimine sumunt, and
the more they are corrected, the more they offend: but let them take their course, 2047Rode caper vites, go on still as they begin,
'tis no sin, let them rejoice secure, God's vengeance will overtake them in the end, and these ill-gotten goods, as an
eagle's feathers, 2048 will consume the rest of their substance; it is 2049aurum Tholosanum, and will produce
no better effects. 2050“Let them lay it up safe, and make their conveyances never so close, lock and shut door,”
saith Chrysostom, “yet fraud and covetousness, two most violent thieves are still included, and a little gain evil
gotten will subvert the rest of their goods.” The eagle in Aesop, seeing a piece of flesh now ready to be sacrificed,
swept it away with her claws, and carried it to her nest; but there was a burning coal stuck to it by chance, which
unawares consumed her young ones, nest, and all together. Let our simoniacal church-chopping patrons, and sacrilegious
harpies, look for no better success.

A second cause is ignorance, and from thence contempt, successit odium in literas ab ignorantia
vulgi; which 2051Junius well perceived:
this hatred and contempt of learning proceeds out of 2052ignorance; as they are themselves
barbarous, idiots, dull, illiterate, and proud, so they esteem of others. Sint Mecaenates, non deerunt
Flacce Marones: Let there be bountiful patrons, and there will be painful scholars in all sciences. But when
they contemn learning, and think themselves sufficiently qualified, if they can write and read, scramble at a piece of
evidence, or have so much Latin as that emperor had, 2053qui nescit dissimulare,
nescit vivere, they are unfit to do their country service, to perform or undertake any action or employment,
which may tend to the good of a commonwealth, except it be to fight, or to do country justice, with common sense, which
every yeoman can likewise do. And so they bring up their children, rude as they are themselves, unqualified, untaught,
uncivil most part. 2054Quis e nostra juventute legitime instituitur literis? Quis oratores aut
Philosophos tangit? quis historiam legit, illam rerum agendarum quasi animam? praecipitant parentes vota sua,
&c. 'twas Lipsius' complaint to his illiterate countrymen, it may be ours. Now shall these men judge of a scholar's
worth, that have no worth, that know not what belongs to a student's labours, that cannot distinguish between a true
scholar and a drone? or him that by reason of a voluble tongue, a strong voice, a pleasing tone, and some trivially
polyanthean helps, steals and gleans a few notes from other men's harvests, and so makes a fairer show, than he that is
truly learned indeed: that thinks it no more to preach, than to speak, 2055“or to run away with an empty cart;” as a grave man said: and thereupon vilify us, and our
pains; scorn us, and all learning. 2056 Because they are
rich, and have other means to live, they think it concerns them not to know, or to trouble themselves with it; a fitter
task for younger brothers, or poor men's sons, to be pen and inkhorn men, pedantical slaves, and no whit beseeming the
calling of a gentleman, as Frenchmen and Germans commonly do, neglect therefore all human learning, what have they to
do with it? Let mariners learn astronomy; merchants, factors study arithmetic; surveyors get them geometry;
spectacle-makers optics; land-leapers geography; town-clerks rhetoric, what should he do with a spade, that hath no
ground to dig; or they with learning, that have no use of it? thus they reason, and are not ashamed to let mariners,
apprentices, and the basest servants, be better qualified than themselves. In former times, kings, princes, and
emperors, were the only scholars, excellent in all faculties. Julius Caesar mended the year, and writ his own
Commentaries,

Antonius, Adrian, Nero, Seve. Jul. &c. 2059Michael the emperor, and Isacius,
were so much given to their studies, that no base fellow would take so much pains: Orion, Perseus, Alphonsus,
Ptolomeus, famous astronomers; Sabor, Mithridates, Lysimachus, admired physicians: Plato's kings all: Evax, that
Arabian prince, a most expert jeweller, and an exquisite philosopher; the kings of Egypt were priests of old, chosen
and from thence — Idem rex hominum, Phoebique sacerdos: but those heroical times are past; the
Muses are now banished in this bastard age, ad sordida tuguriola, to meaner persons, and
confined alone almost to universities. In those days, scholars were highly beloved, 2060honoured, esteemed; as old Ennius by Scipio Africanus, Virgil by Augustus; Horace by
Meceanas: princes' companions; dear to them, as Anacreon to Polycrates; Philoxenus to Dionysius, and highly rewarded.
Alexander sent Xenocrates the philosopher fifty talents, because he was poor, visu rerum, aut
eruditione praestantes viri, mensis olim regum adhibiti, as Philostratus relates of Adrian and Lampridius of
Alexander Severus: famous clerks came to these princes' courts, velut in Lycaeum, as to a
university, and were admitted to their tables, quasi divum epulis accumbentes; Archilaus, that
Macedonian king, would not willingly sup without Euripides, (amongst the rest he drank to him at supper one night, and
gave him a cup of gold for his pains) delectatus poetae suavi sermone; and it was fit it should
be so; because as 2061Plato in his Protagoras well saith, a good philosopher as much excels other men, as a great
king doth the commons of his country; and again, 2062quoniam illis nihil deest, et minime egere solent, et disciplinas quas
profitentur, soli a contemptu vindicare possunt, they needed not to beg so basely, as they compel 2063scholars in our times to complain of
poverty, or crouch to a rich chuff for a meal's meat, but could vindicate themselves, and those arts which they
professed. Now they would and cannot: for it is held by some of them, as an axiom, that to keep them poor, will make
them study; they must be dieted, as horses to a race, not pampered, 2064Alendos volunt, non saginandos, ne melioris mentis flammula
extinguatur; a fat bird will not sing, a fat dog cannot hunt, and so by this depression of theirs 2065some want means, others will, all
want 2066encouragement, as being forsaken almost; and generally contemned. 'Tis an old saying,
Sint Mecaenates, non deerunt Flacce Marones, and 'tis a true saying still. Yet oftentimes I may
not deny it the main fault is in ourselves. Our academics too frequently offend in neglecting patrons, as 2067Erasmus well taxeth, or making ill
choice of them; negligimus oblatos aut amplectimur parum aptos, or if we get a good one,
non studemus mutuis officiis favorem ejus alere, we do not ply and follow him as we should.
Idem mihi accidit Adolescenti (saith Erasmus) acknowledging his fault, et
gravissime peccavi, and so may 2068I say myself, I have offended in this, and so peradventure have many others. We did not
spondere magnatum favoribus, qui caeperunt nos amplecti, apply ourselves with that readiness we
should: idleness, love of liberty, immodicus amor libertatis effecit ut diu cum perfidis
amicis, as he confesseth, et pertinaci pauperate colluctarer, bashfulness, melancholy,
timorousness, cause many of us to be too backward and remiss. So some offend in one extreme, but too many on the other,
we are most part too forward, too solicitous, too ambitious, too impudent; we commonly complain deesse
Maecenates, of want of encouragement, want of means, when as the true defect is in our own want of worth, our
insufficiency: did Maecenas take notice of Horace or Virgil till they had shown themselves first? or had Bavius and
Mevius any patrons? Egregium specimen dent, saith Erasmus, let them approve themselves worthy
first, sufficiently qualified for learning and manners, before they presume or impudently intrude and put themselves on
great men as too many do, with such base flattery, parasitical colloguing, such hyperbolical elogies they do usually
insinuate that it is a shame to hear and see. Immodicae laudes conciliant invidiam, potius quam
laudem, and vain commendations derogate from truth, and we think in conclusion, non melius de
laudato, pejus de laudante, ill of both, the commender and commended. So we offend, but the main fault is in
their harshness, defect of patrons. How beloved of old, and how much respected was Plato to Dionysius? How dear to
Alexander was Aristotle, Demeratus to Philip, Solon to Croesus, Auexarcus and Trebatius to Augustus, Cassius to
Vespasian, Plutarch to Trajan, Seneca to Nero, Simonides to Hieron? how honoured?

those days are gone; Et spes, et ratio studiorum in Caesare tantum: 2070 as he said
of old, we may truly say now, he is our amulet, our 2071sun, our
sole comfort and refuge, our Ptolemy, our common Maecenas, Jacobus munificus, Jacobus pacificus, mysta
Musarum, Rex Platonicus: Grande decus, columenque nostrum: a famous scholar himself, and the sole patron,
pillar, and sustainer of learning: but his worth in this kind is so well known, that as Paterculus of Cato,
Jam ipsum laudare nefas sit: and which 2072 Pliny to Trajan. Seria te carmina, honorque aeternus annalium, non haec
brevis et pudenda praedicatio colet. But he is now gone, the sun of ours set, and yet no night follows,
Sol occubuit, nox nulla sequuta est. We have such another in his room, 2073aureus alter. Avulsus, simili frondescit virga
metallo, and long may he reign and flourish amongst us.

Let me not be malicious, and lie against my genius, I may not deny, but that we have a sprinkling of our gentry,
here and there one, excellently well learned, like those Fuggeri in Germany; Dubartus, Du Plessis, Sadael, in France;
Picus Mirandula, Schottus, Barotius, in Italy; Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto. But they
are but few in respect of the multitude, the major part (and some again excepted, that are indifferent) are wholly bent
for hawks and hounds, and carried away many times with intemperate lust, gaming and drinking. If they read a book at
any time (si quod est interim otii a venatu, poculis, alea, scortis) 'tis an English Chronicle,
St. Huon of Bordeaux, Amadis de Gaul, &c., a play-book, or some pamphlet of news, and that at such seasons only,
when they cannot stir abroad, to drive away time, 2074their sole
discourse is dogs, hawks, horses, and what news? If some one have been a traveller in Italy, or as far as the emperor's
court, wintered in Orleans, and can court his mistress in broken French, wear his clothes neatly in the newest fashion,
sing some choice outlandish tunes, discourse of lords, ladies, towns, palaces, and cities, he is complete and to be
admired: 2075otherwise he and they are much at one; no difference between the master and the man, but
worshipful titles; wink and choose betwixt him that sits down (clothes excepted) and him that holds the trencher behind
him: yet these men must be our patrons, our governors too sometimes, statesmen, magistrates, noble, great, and wise by
inheritance.

Mistake me not (I say again) Vos o Patritius sanguis, you that are worthy senators,
gentlemen, I honour your names and persons, and with all submissiveness, prostrate myself to your censure and service.
There are amongst you, I do ingenuously confess, many well-deserving patrons, and true patriots, of my knowledge,
besides many hundreds which I never saw, no doubt, or heard of, pillars of our commonwealth, 2076whose worth, bounty, learning, forwardness, true zeal in religion, and good esteem of all
scholars, ought to be consecrated to all posterity; but of your rank, there are a debauched, corrupt, covetous,
illiterate crew again, no better than stocks, merum pecus (testor Deum, non mihi videri dignos ingenui
hominis appellatione) barbarous Thracians, et quis ille thrax qui hoc neget? a sordid,
profane, pernicious company, irreligious, impudent and stupid, I know not what epithets to give them, enemies to
learning, confounders of the church, and the ruin of a commonwealth; patrons they are by right of inheritance, and put
in trust freely to dispose of such livings to the church's good; but (hard taskmasters they prove) they take away their
straw, and compel them to make their number of brick: they commonly respect their own ends, commodity is the steer of
all their actions, and him they present in conclusion, as a man of greatest gifts, that will give most; no penny,
2077no paternoster, as the saying is. Nisi preces auro fulcias, amplius
irritas: ut Cerberus offa, their attendants and officers must be bribed, feed, and made, as Cerberus is with a
sop by him that goes to hell. It was an old saying, Omnia Romae venalia (all things are venal
at Rome,) 'tis a rag of Popery, which will never be rooted out, there is no hope, no good to be done without money. A
clerk may offer himself, approve his 2078worth, learning, honesty, religion, zeal, they will commend him for it; but 2079probitas laudatur et alget. If he be a man
of extraordinary parts, they will flock afar off to hear him, as they did in Apuleius, to see Psyche: multi mortales confluebant ad videndum saeculi decus, speculum gloriosum, laudatur ab omnibus, spectatur ob
omnibus, nec quisquam non rex, non regius, cupidus ejus nuptiarium petitor accedit; mirantur quidem divinam formam
omnes, sed ut simulacrum fabre politum mirantur; many mortal men came to see fair Psyche the glory of her age,
they did admire her, commend, desire her for her divine beauty, and gaze upon her; but as on a picture; none would
marry her, quod indotato, fair Psyche had no money. 2080So they do by learning;

He shall have all the good words that may be given, 2082a proper man, and 'tis pity he hath no preferment, all good wishes, but inexorable, indurate as
he is, he will not prefer him, though it be in his power, because he is indotatus, he hath no
money. Or if he do give him entertainment, let him be never so well qualified, plead affinity, consanguinity,
sufficiency, he shall serve seven years, as Jacob did for Rachel, before he shall have it. 2083If he will enter at first, he must get in at that Simoniacal gate, come off soundly, and put in
good security to perform all covenants, else he will not deal with, or admit him. But if some poor scholar, some parson
chaff, will offer himself; some trencher chaplain, that will take it to the halves, thirds, or accepts of what he will
give, he is welcome; be conformable, preach as he will have him, he likes him before a million of others; for the host
is always best cheap: and then as Hierom said to Cromatius, patella dignum operculum, such a
patron, such a clerk; the cure is well supplied, and all parties pleased. So that is still verified in our age, which
2084Chrysostom
complained of in his time, Qui opulentiores sunt, in ordinem parasitorum cogunt eos, et ipsos tanquam
canes ad mensas suas enutriunt, eorumque impudentes. Venires iniquarum coenarum reliquiis differtiunt, iisdem pro
arbitro abulentes: Rich men keep these lecturers, and fawning parasites, like so many dogs at their tables, and
filling their hungry guts with the offals of their meat, they abuse them at their pleasure, and make them say what they
propose. 2085“As children do by a bird or a butterfly in a string, pull in and let him out as they
list, do they by their trencher chaplains, prescribe, command their wits, let in and out as to them it seems best.” If
the patron be precise, so must his chaplain be; if he be papistical, his clerk must be so too, or else be turned out.
These are those clerks which serve the turn, whom they commonly entertain, and present to church livings, whilst in the
meantime we that are University men, like so many hidebound calves in a pasture, tarry out our time, wither away as a
flower ungathered in a garden, and are never used; or as so many candles, illuminate ourselves alone, obscuring one
another's light, and are not discerned here at all, the least of which, translated to a dark room, or to some country
benefice, where it might shine apart, would give a fair light, and be seen over all. Whilst we lie waiting here as
those sick men did at the Pool of 2086 Bethesda, till
the Angel stirred the water, expecting a good hour, they step between, and beguile us of our preferment. I have not yet
said, if after long expectation, much expense, travel, earnest suit of ourselves and friends, we obtain a small
benefice at last; our misery begins afresh, we are suddenly encountered with the flesh, world, and devil, with a new
onset; we change a quiet life for an ocean of troubles, we come to a ruinous house, which before it be habitable, must
be necessarily to our great damage repaired; we are compelled to sue for dilapidations, or else sued ourselves, and
scarce yet settled, we are called upon for our predecessor's arrearages; first-fruits, tenths, subsidies, are instantly
to be paid, benevolence, procurations, &c., and which is most to be feared, we light upon a cracked title, as it
befell Clenard of Brabant, for his rectory, and charge of his Beginae; he was no sooner
inducted, but instantly sued, cepimusque2087(saith he) strenue litigare, et implacabili bello confligere: at
length after ten years' suit, as long as Troy's siege, when he had tired himself, and spent his money, he was fain to
leave all for quietness' sake, and give it up to his adversary. Or else we are insulted over, and trampled on by
domineering officers, fleeced by those greedy harpies to get more fees; we stand in fear of some precedent lapse; we
fall amongst refractory, seditious sectaries, peevish puritans, perverse papists, a lascivious rout of atheistical
Epicures, that will not be reformed, or some litigious people (those wild beasts of Ephesus must be fought with) that
will not pay their dues without much repining, or compelled by long suit; Laici clericis oppido
infesti, an old axiom, all they think well gotten that is had from the church, and by such uncivil, harsh
dealings, they make their poor minister weary of his place, if not his life; and put case they be quiet honest men,
make the best of it, as often it falls out, from a polite and terse academic, he must turn rustic, rude, melancholise
alone, learn to forget, or else, as many do, become maltsters, graziers, chapmen, &c. (now banished from the
academy, all commerce of the muses, and confined to a country village, as Ovid was from Rome to Pontus), and daily
converse with a company of idiots and clowns.

2103. As for ourselves (for neither are we free from this fault) the same guilt, the same crime, may be objected
against us: for it is through our fault, negligence, and avarice, that so many and such shameful corruptions occur in
the church (both the temple and the Deity are offered for sale), that such sordidness is introduced, such impiety
committed, such wickedness, such a mad gulf of wretchedness and irregularity — these I say arise from all our faults,
but more particularly from ours of the University. We are the nursery in which those ills are bred with which the state
is afflicted; we voluntarily introduce them, and are deserving of every opprobrium and suffering, since we do not
afterwards encounter them according to our strength. For what better can we expect when so many poor, beggarly fellows,
men of every order, are readily and without election, admitted to degrees? Who, if they can only commit to memory a few
definitions and divisions, and pass the customary period in the study of logics, no matter with what effect, whatever
sort they prove to be, idiots, triflers, idlers, gamblers, sots, sensualists,

—— mere ciphers in the book of life

Like those who boldly woo'd Ulysses' wife;

Born to consume the fruits of earth: in truth,

As vain and idle as Pheacia's youth;

only let them have passed the stipulated period in the University, and professed themselves collegians: either for
the sake of profit, or through the influence of their friends, they obtain a presentation; nay, sometimes even
accompanied by brilliant eulogies upon their morals and acquirements; and when they are about to take leave, they are
honoured with the most flattering literary testimonials in their favour, by those who undoubtedly sustain a loss of
reputation in granting them. For doctors and professors (as an author says) are anxious about one thing only, viz.,
that out of their various callings they may promote their own advantage, and convert the public loss into their private
gains. For our annual officers wish this only, that those who commence, whether they are taught or untaught is of no
moment, shall be sleek, fat, pigeons, worth the plucking. The Philosophastic are admitted to a degree in Arts, because
they have no acquaintance with them. And they are desired to be wise men, because they are endowed with no wisdom, and
bring no qualification for a degree, except the wish to have it. The Theologastic (only let them pay) thrice learned,
are promoted to every academic honour. Hence it is that so many vile buffoons, so many idiots everywhere, placed in the
twilight of letters, the mere ghosts of scholars, wanderers in the market place, vagrants, barbels, mushrooms, dolts,
asses, a growling herd, with unwashed feet, break into the sacred precincts of theology, bringing nothing along with
them but an impudent front, some vulgar trifles and foolish scholastic technicalities, unworthy of respect even at the
crossing of the highways. This is the unworthy, vagrant, voluptuous race, fitter for the hog sty (haram) than the altar
(aram), that basely prostitute divine literature; these are they who fill the pulpits, creep into the palaces of our
nobility after all other prospects of existence fail them, owing to their imbecility of body and mind, and their being
incapable of sustaining any other parts in the commonwealth; to this sacred refuge they fly, undertaking the office of
the ministry, not from sincerity, but as St. Paul says, huckstering the word of God. Let not any one suppose that it is
here intended to detract from those many exemplary men of which the Church of England may boast, learned, eminent, and
of spotless fame, for they are more numerous in that than in any other church of Europe: nor from those most learned
universities which constantly send forth men endued with every form of virtue. And these seminaries would produce a
still greater number of inestimable scholars hereafter if sordidness did not obscure the splendid light, corruption
interrupt, and certain truckling harpies and beggars envy them their usefulness. Nor can any one be so blind as not to
perceive this — any so stolid as not to understand it — any so perverse as not to acknowledge how sacred Theology has
been contaminated by those notorious idiots, and the celestial Muse treated with profanity. Vile and shameless souls
(says Luther) for the sake of gain, like flies to a milk-pail, crowd round the tables of the nobility in expectation of
a church living, any office, or honour, and flock into any public hall or city ready to accept of any employment that
may offer. “A thing of wood and wires by others played.” Following the paste as the parrot, they stutter out anything
in hopes of reward: obsequious parasites, says Erasmus, teach, say, write, admire, approve, contrary to their
conviction, anything you please, not to benefit the people but to improve their own fortunes. They subscribe to any
opinions and decisions contrary to the word of God, that they may not offend their patron, but retain the favour of the
great, the applause of the multitude, and thereby acquire riches for themselves; for they approach Theology, not that
they may perform a sacred duty, but make a fortune: nor to promote the interests of the church, but to pillage it:
seeking, as Paul says, not the things which are of Jesus Christ, but what may be their own: not the treasure of their
Lord, but the enrichment of themselves and their followers. Nor does this evil belong to those of humbler birth and
fortunes only, it possesses the middle and higher ranks, bishops excepted. “O Pontiffs, tell the efficacy of
gold in sacred matters!” Avarice often leads the highest men astray, and men, admirable in all other respects: these
find a salvo for simony; and, striking against this rock of corruption, they do not shear but flay the flock; and,
wherever they teem, plunder, exhaust, raze, making shipwreck of their reputation, if not of their souls also. Hence it
appears that this malady did not flow from the humblest to the highest classes, but vice versa, so that the
maxim is true although spoken in jest — “he bought first, therefore has the best right to sell.” For a Simoniac (that I
may use the phraseology of Leo) has not received a favour; since he has not received one he does not possess one; and
since he does not possess one he cannot confer one. So far indeed are some of those who are placed at the helm from
promoting others, that they completely obstruct them, from a consciousness of the means by which themselves obtained
the honour. For he who imagines that they emerged from their obscurity through their learning, is deceived; indeed,
whoever supposes promotion to be the reward of genius, erudition, experience, probity, piety, and poetry (which
formerly was the case, but nowadays is only promised) is evidently deranged. How or when this malady commenced, I shall
not further inquire; but from these beginnings, this accumulation of vices, all her calamities and miseries have been
brought upon the Church; hence such frequent acts of simony, complaints, fraud, impostures — from this one fountain
spring all its conspicuous iniquities. I shall not press the question of ambition and courtly flattery, lest they may
be chagrined about luxury, base examples of life, which offend the honest, wanton drinking parties, &c. Yet; hence
is that academic squalor, the muses now look sad, since every low fellow ignorant of the arts, by those very arts
rises, is promoted, and grows rich, distinguished by ambitious titles, and puffed up by his numerous honours; he just
shows himself to the vulgar, and by his stately carriage displays a species of majesty, a remarkable solicitude,
letting down a flowing beard, decked in a brilliant toga resplendent with purple, and respected also on account of the
splendour of his household and number of his servants. There are certain statues placed in sacred edifices that seem to
sink under their load, and almost to perspire, when in reality they are void of sensation, and do not contribute to the
stony stability, so these men would wish to look like Atlases, when they are no better than statues of stone,
insignificant scrubs, funguses, dolts, little different from stone. Meanwhile really learned men, endowed with all that
can adorn a holy life, men who have endured the heat of mid-day, by some unjust lot obey these, dizzards, content
probably with a miserable salary, known by honest appellations, humble, obscure, although eminently worthy, needy,
leading a private life without honour, buried alive in some poor benefice, or incarcerated for ever in their college
chambers, lying hid ingloriously. But I am unwilling to stir this sink any longer or any deeper; hence those tears,
this melancholy habit of the muses; hence (that I may speak with Secellius) is it that religion is brought into
disrepute and contempt, and the priesthood abject; (and since this is so, I must speak out and use a filthy witticism
of the filthy) a foetid. crowd, poor, sordid, melancholy, miserable, despicable, contemptible.